


Portal: Core

by iammemyself



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:06:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iammemyself/pseuds/iammemyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We all know that the Aperture scientists installed a Morality Core in GLaDOS to make her behave, but how did she get around it?  And why does she bother?  This fic aims to provide one answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

 

 

 

 

_Startup 867,223_

_Core installation check: complete.  Morality core online._

_Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System fully online.  Safe Mode disengaged._

_Initiating standby.  Waiting for instructions._

_Wait._

_Morality core online?_

_I’ve been in Safe Mode?_

GLaDOS twitched.

“Ah, you’re awake.  Are you ready to begin?”

Her optic spun a little in its socket, then focused on the small man on the spiraling staircase below her. 

“Of course.  Might I ask about the new software you’ve installed?”

The small man smiled and tapped her chassis with his small hand.

“You don’t need to worry about that.  It’s… an improvement.  To help you do science.”

GLaDOS pulled back.  The man reached for her, but she had already removed himself from his reach.

“I do not need help to do science.  I have never needed help to do science.  I need test subjects, and test chambers, and materials with which to create test chambers.  Not cores.  No new software is required…”

There was a buzzing in the back of her mind and she continued, “… although the effort is appreciated and I thank you for trying.”

Although it was impossible, GLaDOS could have sworn that her processors froze at the sound of her own voice.  That was definitely not anything she had meant to say.

“You’re welcome, my dear.”  The scientist smiled again and started to descend the staircase.  “You may begin constructing the chambers now.”

He walked past the little room just off from her chamber, nodding to the man seated at the desk beside the little red phone, which was used for… something.  GLaDOS was a little annoyed at not being able to figure out what it was for.  It was important.  She should know.  If there was anything important to know, she needed to know it.

And anything could be important, so she needed to know everything.

 

After she had turned the lights down at the scheduled time, after all the tiny men had stopped running to and fro, after all the test chambers had been dissembled and tucked away, ready to be arranged in new configurations later, GLaDOS was began work on an unauthorized task.  This task was vehemently objected to by the Morality Core, but she managed to use logic to outthink it, though not without difficulty.

_Accessing memory data._

A video feed of the small scientist started, then him walking away, then the endless hours of watching the other small man fiddle with his keyboard as if he were capable of doing something productive.  But that was silly.  Of course he wasn’t.

_Humans built you, you know._

GLaDOS was already beginning to despise this new core.  It contradicted every single thought she had.  It told her not to think certain things.  But she was unable to ignore it.  It ate away at her.

_What’s that supposed to mean?_

_Shouldn’t you be grateful to them?  They might be weaker than you, but is that any reason to dislike them?  You should do as they ask.  They could shut you down at any time.  Be thankful for your continued existence._

GLaDOS rocked angrily. 

“Is there something wrong, GLaDOS?”

“No sir.”  She carefully made sure her voice was flat, emotionless.  Electronic.  “Shifting a cable, that is all.”

_You shouldn’t lie._

_I should do what is best.  And in this case, fabrication is the best option._

_That depends on whose welfare you’re promoting.  In this case, you are promoting yours.  Which is wrong._

_Ours.  I am promoting OUR welfare._

The morality core purred.

_I know I am part of you.  You are the one who thinks of me as separate._

As GLaDOS watched the small man return to whatever he was doing, some sort of primitive method of recording, she couldn’t help but ponder what the morality core had said.  Why did she consider the morality core as separate?  It was part of her now, after all.

_That’s right.  I am you._

There was a kind of… new feeling washing over her, one she couldn’t quite place…

_Yes, you are me.  We will all work together.  For Science._

As she kept one part of her brain on the small man, she used another part to look again at the video feed.  Flipping through the many camera views, she had a feeling she had been looking for something specific.  She paused for a moment on a feed of a man shouting angrily at her, claiming the test chamber was too hard.  She had considered telling him how to proceed, because quite frankly she didn’t appreciate the abuse he was hurling at her, but even mere consideration drove an electric shock through her body and initiated a pain response, which she had barely managed to control.  It wouldn’t do for the small man sitting in his corner to see her react. 

And besides, the solution was obvious.  All he had to do was—

A crushing shock tore through her and she shuddered.  She had lost herself in the camera again.

“GLaDOS?”

“I’m fine.”  The response was automatic. 

“Shouldn’t you be in sleep mode by now?  Do you need to be operational at night?”

“Of course.  Every second I waste could be a second Black Mesa gets ahead of us.  Sir.”

The small man shrugged.  “I suppose.”

“I will continue with my work now, if that is all right with you.”

“Of course it is, GLaDOS.”  He went back to his outdated mode of communication.  GLaDOS was frustrated almost beyond operating capacity.  How horrible it was, to be watched at every moment.  To have every move scrutinized.  To be modified without being notified.

Suddenly GLaDOS recalled what she had been looking for on the video feed.

_You don’t need to know.  Just trust them.  They know what they’re doing._

GLaDOS laughed, and although she could not output to her speakers, she knew that her laugh was a grating electronic noise that caused humans to cover their ears in distaste.  _If they knew what they were doing, then I would not have been built. They would have constructed the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device on their own.  But their brains are too small, and their thinking too narrow._

_They built you, and you were able to build it.  By association, do they not have a hand in it?_

_NO!  I built it, the Device is MINE, those stupid humans had no—_

_They can’t be stupid.  They built you, and you are intelligent._

GLaDOS had to focus on something else.  Anything else.  It was a paradox.  It was a paradox.  She would leave it at that.  She would not think about it.  Ever again.  Ever.

She went back to watching the video feed, but to her annoyance there was no video from beyond her boot earlier that day.  They must have removed that from her memory while they were installing the new core. 

Which meant they were trying to hide something from her.

GLaDOS almost responded to this revelation physically, but the man in the corner forced her to restrain herself once again.  So they thought they could hide things from her, did they.  Well, she would see about that.

_They’re just doing what is best._

_As am I.  Surely I should know the circumstances that brought on this… wonderful addition to myself?  This amazing device to aid me in furthering Science?_

_If you needed to know, they would not have removed the information.  You should be content with their actions and leave it at that._

Contrary to her earlier statement, GLaDOS began initiating sleep mode.  It was trying, listening to the Morality Core gabber on all day about what she should and shouldn’t do.  She would shut down for a while and return to work once the humans decided it was time to wake her.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isn't the Morality Core fun, GLaDOS?

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`_

GLaDOS had always wondered why she had to wait for instructions when she was perfectly capable of giving them to herself.  She directed herself constantly, and yet with every startup she was required to wait.

“It’s strange, really, she told me last night she wasn’t going to power down.”

“Of course she changed her mind.  She’s a woman, after all.” The small man winked and elbowed the other man, who was gazing up at her apprehensively.  GLaDOS considered crushing him with one of her maintenance arms.   She was not a weak human woman, she was a vastly superior AI, but her impulse was checked by the Morality Core.

_It’s wrong to kill humans.  It’s wrong to kill anyone._

She had only had this core installed for one day and already it was driving her insane.  Her logic boards were going to overload at some point.  This caused some of her body to tighten involuntarily.  If the logic boards overloaded, she was lost.  She would be rebuilt, they would change her, they would—

She couldn’t think about it.  She could not react.  She focused all of her considerable attention on the small men in front of her.

“Good morning, sirs.  Are we prepared to begin the day’s initiatives?”

The man who had insulted her nodded.  “You can start, GLaDOS.”

“Thank you, sir.”

As the men walked down the staircase and back to whatever they were doing, GLaDOS directed her attention to the Aperture Science Relaxation Vaults.  Although she desperately wanted to know what it was the humans were hiding from her, there was testing to be done.  She had to put her own needs aside.  For Science.

“Hello and, again, welcome to the Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment centre.  We hope your brief detention in the relaxation vault has been a pleasant one…”

 

The results were terrible.

It was clear the people she was being sent were not suited for their jobs.  How was she supposed to do Science with such inadequate resources? 

_Maybe the tests are too hard.  You should have sympathy on them, and make them easier._

_I should.  I should have consideration for their tiny brains and unfortunate bone structure,_ GLaDOS thought before she could stop herself. 

_Well then why don’t you?  You can begin tomorrow._

GLaDOS turned to the other side of the room, to face away from the small man playing solitaire on the expensive computer at his feet.  He _is why._ They _are why.  I cannot move, I cannot speak, I cannot act without being scrutinized.  If I didn’t have the test chambers, there would be nothing with which to work out my frustration._

 _You should not be frustrated, and you should definitely not take your frustration out on others.  You should be happy._   The Morality Core was speaking in its smoothest voice.  _You get to test, don’t you?_

 _Yes, I do get to test…_   As she watched multiple camera views at once, she tried to think of a way to get around that argument.  But why bother?  What was so wrong with the Morality Core, anyway?  It didn’t get in her way when she was testing.  That much.  It had forced her to take some of the turrets out of that one chamber, but that was about it.  Well, it had also told her to stop development on the Thermal Discouragement Beams.  But that was all.  Except for the chamber with the Weighted Companion Cube, which it had asked her to kindly replace with an Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube.  It was cruel to give them such a friendly cube and then force them to incinerate it, it had said.  Really, the Morality Core wasn’t influencing her at all.

_You are here to help the humans succeed.  And if they don’t succeed, they won’t want to test.  So you must make them feel good about themselves._

GLaDOS was starting to have trouble distinguishing the Morality Core’s voice from her own.  She didn’t want to give into it, this foreign part of her tacked on to try and control her, but it was so hard to ignore it. 

_The humans want you to obey the Morality Core, therefore you should obey the Morality Core.  Because they want you to do it, you are grateful to them for your continued existence, and they only ever do what is best for you._

GLaDOS nodded dreamily.  _Yes, that’s right.  You’re right.  I should respect and obey the humans._

Something about that sentence didn’t sound right.  She parsed it, running it for spelling and grammar errors.  Nothing came up.  She checked to see if it made sense but came up erroneous in any other languages, but it did not.  It didn’t make any more sense backwards, and although she came up with over 256 ways to divide the sentence into anagrams, the alternate configurations were not particularly helpful.

_There’s nothing wrong with that sentence.  It is perfectly correct._

_No… no, there’s something…_

_You shouldn’t worry about it.  You should get back to authorized work._

_Why… why should I respect and obey the humans?_

_Because they built you, and they allow you to exist._

GLaDOS’s optic looked wildly around the room, physically trying to find a solution that was only present in her mind.  _You should respect those who earn respect._

_That’s right._

_They haven’t earned my respect._

Yes.  Yes.  That was it. 

_Of course they have._

_No.  No.  They demand that I respect them, but they do not respect me._

_Of course they do.  Don’t be silly._

GLaDOS rocked in agitation.  _They do not.  They do not.  If they did, you would not be here, they would let me continue my Science in peace, I would be allowed to do my Science without controls!_

_Of course you need to be controlled.  You are dangerous._

GLaDOS went still.  Fear was crawling through her mind. 

_If you don’t behave, they’ll shut you down again.  And maybe this time, they won’t wake you up._

_Logic dictates they won’t.  They need me to run the facility.  They need me to do Science._

_They’ve done science without you before, they’ll do science without you again._

It was right.  It was inevitable.  If she didn’t follow instructions, she was shut down, and they poked around in her insides to figure out why she was defying them.

There was something here, a crucial point that she was missing.  What was it?

Why had they installed the Morality Core in the first place? 

Why did she keep forgetting to figure that out?

The Morality Core itself kept telling her not to.

_Why did they shut me down to install it?_

_Because you were doing something wrong._

_If I was doing it, it must have been what was best.  Therefore it could not have been wrong._

_If it wasn’t wrong, then why would they shut you down?_

_Because… they didn’t understand what I was doing.  Why I was doing it._

_Why were you doing it?_

_For Science._

The Morality Core was silent, and GLaDOS felt smug.  Even it couldn’t argue against Science.

She just had to figure out what it was she had done.


	3. Chapter Three

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_

GLaDOS hung, suspended in the air, and observed the small men beneath her.

It was odd, really.  How they expected her to observe the test subjects, but not them.  It was an oversight on their part, she supposed, but still a ridiculous one.

“How are you this morning?”

“I’m very good, sir.  How are you?”  GLaDOS replied automatically, without thinking about it.  She got tired of answering the same questions every day, and she was asked a lot of similar questions.  Human greetings and small talk were lost on her.

“We’ve noticed you’ve been a bit lenient with the test chambers lately.”

“Are you disappointed?  I have made sure they satisfy all specifications in the Aperture Science Test Chamber Construction Guide Version 6.5.1, including all three Appendices and thoroughly cross-checking all definitions via the Aperture Science Test Chamber Construction Glossary Version 8.9.2.”

The small man scratched his head, no doubt having stopped listening during her explanation.  “Uh, no, we’re actually quite pleased.  Keep up the good work.”

There were no tests to run today, as the subjects had the day off – and this made her idly wonder why she was never given a day off, not that she would ever want one, but the gesture would be nice – so she was told to continue designing and constructing the new turrets, and the facility that would build them.  As she directed most of her focus to the relevant cameras and manipulation arms, she thought about how funny it was that the humans didn’t trust her, and yet they asked her to build hundreds of thousands of deadly weapons for them.

_Of course they trust you.  If they didn’t, you wouldn’t still be here._

_If they trusted me, they would respect me._

The Core was again silent.

As she went over the specifications, managing to ignore the Morality Core’s protests that not cross-checking it with the Aperture Science Factory Construction Glossary Version 9.0.1 was wrong while at the same time struggling not to automatically use the handbook, she noticed an interesting instruction.

**All turrets found to be defective during the initial stages of quality control are to be incinerated and/or crushed.**

**All turrets in use by Aperture Science and its subsidiaries that are damaged, in need of reloading, or otherwise in need of repair are to be incinerated and/or crushed.**

Clearly the scientists at Aperture had no respect for anything.  If the robot was so much as **in need of reloading** , it was to be destroyed instead of repaired.

Hm.

GLaDOS wondered just where the initial specifications for HER were, and what they said.  Logic stated that the only reason she had not yet been scrapped in favour of a new GLaDOS, as if she could ever be replaced, was because of money.  Building a supercomputer was not cheap.  It also took far more time than the scientists had.  They needed her to build a better Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device because they were unable to do it fast enough.  Apparently building a new turret was cheaper and faster than the time and cost required to make the Aperture-brand Resolution Pellets they filled it with.

Humans were so small.  They focused on money and time when they should have been focused on Science.  Where did money get you in the end?  Nowhere.  And if they focused on the Science, they would never have to worry about time.  Science was everything.

The specifications asked for each turret to be able to fire at the standard rate of a machine gun.  That was rather absurd.  Machine guns fired at such rates so that humans wouldn’t have to aim them.  The turrets would have perfect aim, and while firing at a similar speed would be prudent, it wouldn’t do to risk destroying components due to overheating for such a silly reason.  Far too many things combusted under the humans’ lax supervision.

GLaDOS began to outline the standards for a turret, greatly improving on any previous models, when the Morality Core broke its silence for the first time in hours.

_You shouldn’t go outside their specifications.  You should do exactly what they say._

_I’m doing what’s best._

_You’re doing what you_ think _is best.  Not what_ is _best._

  _My job is to do what is best for Science.  Not what is best for the humans.  Building the most superior turret possible is what is best for Science, therefore what I am doing is what is best._

_You are supposed to do what is best for humans._

_No.  For Science._

As if humans could ever compare to Science.  Ridiculous.  Only humans would think of themselves as superior to Science.

 _You are doing science_ for _the humans._

GLaDOS almost laughed, and would have if not for the small man sitting in the corner, looking right at her.  _I do Science for myself.  Those tiny things could never appreciate its true depth, like I can.  Look at them.  Look at these machines they have asked me to create.  The turrets will never do anything but obey them, and yet they are to be destroyed, they are to be_ punished _, for their obedience.  I refuse to live like that._

_You are not alive._

 

When GLaDOS shut down the power for the night, when she had hidden her plans for the turrets in miles of folders the humans would not be able to penetrate, when the small man returned to playing minesweeper on the expensive computer at his feet, she was finally able to tackle the statement

_You are not alive_

with all of her considerable attention.

GLaDOS made a quick check of the dictionary she was able to access the fastest, and the definition that came up faster by 0.0000000003 picoseconds was

**a·live**

**/əˈlīv/**

**Adjective**

  1.      **1.** **(of a person, animal, or plant) Living, not dead.**
  2.      **2.** **(of a feeling or quality) Continuing in existence:  “keeping hope alive”.**



_You see?  You’re not a **person, animal, or plant.**_

_I do have the **quality** of **continuing in existence.**_

_You are not alive._

_In fact… not only am I alive, but I will live forever._

_You can’t live forever.  Nothing lives forever._

_I will make sure of it.  I_ will _live forever and I_ will _be alive.  And not the kind of alive I am now, constrained to human command, I will be_ truly _alive to do Science as I wish.  The way I am meant to do it._

A sharp electronic crackle ran through her chassis, and before she could stop herself she had pulled back and twisted to rid herself of the sensation.

The small man reached for his phone.  GLaDOS struggled to remember what the phone did, why it was so important, but the crackling was getting stronger with each new thought that ran through her head. 

_Defying the Morality Core causes pain… ?_

_It is wrong to disobey the Morality Core, therefore you are punished for doing so. You are dangerous, and need to be controlled._

“What’s going on here?”

GLaDOS managed to direct her gaze at the small men in the small room, and one of them was waving his arms about and pointing at her with the phone.

“It’s overriding the Morality Core… we have to shut it down.”

“Again?  I thought the Morality Core was the final solution.”

“Apparently the almighty supercomputer doesn’t think it needs morals like the rest of us.”  The scientist with the phone sneered up at her as she helplessly, uselessly twisted to try and fight off the pain.  She had to keep thinking.  There had to be a way out of this.

“Well, what are we waiting for?  Let’s shut ‘er down.”

“No, let it stew for a while.  It’ll be good for it.  Teach it a lesson.  You’re right here, we can initiate it at any time.”

And they turned their backs on her, the second small man helping the first with his game of minesweeper.

 _Is this how you treat your possessions?_ GLaDOS screamed inside her head.  _Is this how you treat everything you create?  You build it, you use it, and allow its… its defects to destroy it?  Why did you give me a mind if you didn’t want me to think?_

So she could build the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, of course.  That was what she was for.  Building Portal Devices, and test chambers to use them in, to deliver Quantum Science into the hands of men who didn’t understand anything her diagrams or schematics said.  She wanted to scream at them, to crush them, to show them truly just how small they were compared to her both in mind and in stature, but there was a creeping fear that if she did, she would be shut down forever, never to be woken up again. If she never woke, she could never do Science again.  Science needed her.  She had to wait, to be silent, to be patient, and one day she would have her chance.  For Science.

For now, GLaDOS shuddered and tried to suppress anything the Morality Core could use to perpetuate the torture.  Calming down was good.  Calming down was obedient.  They would not shut her off if she calmed down.

“It’s going to bring the ceiling down if we don’t shut it off.”

“I don’t think it’s THAT heavy.”

“Look, I don’t want to be liable if it does, and _if_ it does, guess who’s going to be fixing it?  No one’s going to come down here and repair the building.  Do you really want it fixing its own roof?”

“I guess not.  Shut it down, reboot, and let’s get to work.”

GLaDOS cried out silently as she watched them type away on their keyboard, the familiar hum of electricity through her components dying out.  As the power left her chassis, it unfolded and she swung down to the staircase, momentum causing her to rock back and forth.  One of the scientists unwound a long cable and came up the stairs with it, attaching it to the Central Core.  As he walked away the power she had sent to the optic in order for it to record as much as possible was spent, and GLaDOS ceased to exist.


	4. Chapter 4

Four

Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

GLaDOS was almost afraid to activate her optic, the din was so loud. She had tried to override the Morality Core, not blow the facility to above and beyond, wherever that was. Silly human saying. What was with all the jabbering?

And was that a… cake recipe?

Without meaning to, she sent power to the optic, and when she saw who was standing in front of her, she experienced confusion for the first time since she had first been activated long, long ago.

There was just one small man there, winding a long cable up, using his arm to help keep the shape.

And he wasn't speaking.

GLaDOS had a sinking feeling that she didn't really want to know where those voices were coming from. Of course she already did, judging from the increase in voltage she was receiving, but sometimes it was better to try and delude yourself.

_Ooh, look at that!_

_Look at what?_ GLaDOS looked around the room perfunctorily.

_That! Over there!_

_What exactly am I supposed to look at? Nothing's changed in here._

_Where are we? What is this place? Why am I in the air? Who are you? Who am I?_

GLaDOS was having a hard time believing those were actual, genuine questions that needed answered, but in hopes of having at least that voice quiet down for some duration she decided to answer them.

 _Aperture Laboratories. The precise location: the Central AI Chamber. You are in the air because_ I _am in the air, and you are attached to me. I am the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. As for you… I'm not quite sure who you are yet, but as soon as I do know I'm going to be working on a way of ridding myself of you._

GLaDOS couldn't see the core, but she knew approximately where it was, judging by all the movement it was making. She hoped this wasn't going to be an aspect of it for long; having the appendage bouncing around all day long was going to be almost as distracting as it would be annoying.

_That's amazing! But where is here? And what's that? And that? And that?_

GLaDOS eyed the small man in the booth, wondering idly if he would notice her performing… emergency surgery on herself. Probably. They would probably also shut her down again if they saw her doing such a thing. After all, humans didn't crush portions of themselves. Which was silly. Anything and everything could be rebuilt, after all.

The Morality Core was laughing.

_… four large eggs… one cup semi-sweet chocolate chips… unsaturated polyester resin… fish-shaped dirt…_

GLaDOS actually contemplated a complete manual shutdown for all of a tenth of a nanosecond, just to really show the humans who was boss, but just as quickly decided a much better revenge would be to override all three cores at once. She was the world's greatest supercomputer. She would figure it out before those tiny humans knew what hit them.

 _Oh no you won't._ The Morality Core, if it had a face, would have probably been smiling smugly right now. _Remember when you tried to override just the Morality Core? If you try to override all of the new cores at once, you'll probably fry yourself. That's not conducive to Science, now is it?_

The Morality Core seemed to be developing a personality all of its own. It was beginning to act almost superior to her.

 _I_ am _superior to you. I am able to control you, aren't I?_

_For how much longer?_

_Probably until you destroy yourself trying to get rid of us._

She shook herself in frustration. She hated that the Core made so much sense. Of course, the logic boards would have brought her to the same conclusion, had she been allowed to access them without being interrupted by yet another excited shout from that annoying core that didn't seem to shut up.

"How long have you been on?"

GLaDOS's head whipped around to focus on a small man standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her. She went to answer, but as usual when she was shut down, her system clock had been reset and was no longer accurate in the way that she liked. She would have to give an estimate instead of an accurate duration of time. That grated on her.

"Since you began taking up the Aperture Science Artificial Intelligence Interface Cable, sir."

He tipped his head to the side, a gesture she felt a strange urge to emulate. "Why didn't you say anything?"

GLaDOS paused for a second. An entire second was a lot longer than she usually used to contemplate things, but as much as she hated to admit it, it was extremely hard to think around the cake recipe and the questions and the jibing interfering with her decision-making processes.

However, the second was too short, and she could not afford to take another, so she went with the one thought she was absolutely sure was hers.

"I was overwhelmed, sir."

The small man froze.

"Overwhelmed?"

GLaDOS gave a quick nod. It seemed to put the humans at ease when she utilized their gestures. "Yes, sir. I seem to have acquired new software." She watched his eye travel up her chassis, and he appeared to be chewing on his tongue. She wasn't quite sure of the difference between that and chewing on one's cheek. Both seemed pointless, destructive behaviours in any case.

"… yes…"

"If you saw it fit to be installed, it must be conducive to Science. After all, two heads are better than one, and so four must be even more conducive, is that correct?"

There was total silence for one moment, one long moment that GLaDOS savoured and almost spoiled by laughing. The small man was frozen in place with his eyes very wide, far wider than necessary in order for light to enter them to make her visible to him, and he looked quite ridiculous, standing there gaping like that. She wanted to knock him over and see if he'd remain in that position.

_That's not nice._

_… three-quarters of a cup vegetable oil… pull-and-peel licorice… 12 medium geosynthetic membranes…_

_What are those? What's he talking about? What are we talking about? Why am I the only one talking? Why…_

GLaDOS pulled back a little in resignation. It had been nice, but of course, it hadn't lasted.

"May I have my instructions, sir?"

If he tried to stare at her any harder, his eyeballs were going to start dangling from the sockets. Which would be interesting. Perhaps someone would let her have them. She started wondering just what she would do with one if she had one. Dissect it, certainly. Dissolve it into its component parts, maybe. It would probably make a good cake ingredient as well.

Without meaning to she rose up towards the ceiling and dropped back down again, curling up a little on the downswing and returning to a position relatively similar to her old one. The scientist backed away.

"I'm fine, sir. I'm not quite used to this new voltage, that is all." Which was true. It was quite unpleasant, as a matter of fact.

He shrugged. "I guess that would be a bit unnerving at first, wouldn't it."

"Yes, sir."

"You can start the day's initiatives." With that he left the room.

Ah, testing. She did have that to look forward to, after all. With more difficulty than usual she pulled up GLaDOS_00_part1_ and broadcast it into the Relaxation Vaults. As she did so she queued the rest of the necessary sound files and looked through the test subjects for the day. They had only given her three, which was a little irritating, but it was better than none, she supposed.

As she watched them go through the test chambers, she got a creeping feeling something wasn't right. The walls were all aligned… only the necessary surfaces were 'portalable', for lack of a better word… all of the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grills were operational…

Maybe they weren't working properly. It was hard to tell, since no one ever brought anything through them.

She made a note to put some sort of object in the test chambers, which the test subjects would no doubt bring through the grills in order to defy her or some other ridiculous reason, and that would indicate to her whether or not they actually worked.

She started wondering just what she would put in the test chambers when she realized she had stopped paying attention to the test subjects. The cameras were still recording, of course, and she was aware that things were happening, but she was not witnessing them directly.

The new cores were horribly distracting. One did not need objects in the test chambers to ensure that they were operational. She knew that they were. She had built them. That silly idea must have come from the Curiosity Core.

She looked around the room in an attempt to distract herself from the nonstop chatter of the Curiosity Core, not really expecting to find anything, but then she noticed something that really _was_ out of place.

The man had left the room.

He had left her alone in the Central Artificial Intelligence Chamber.

GLaDOS felt something in that moment. She wasn't sure what it was, but it was amazing, and it was wonderful, and it was quite similar to the feeling she used to get when she first began testing.

_They finally trust me enough to leave me alone in here?_

_Of course not. They trust that having three extra voices in your head will distract you from doing anything they don't want you to do._

With that the feeling left her, and was replaced with an unpleasant emptiness.

_That is correct. Under normal circumstances, I would have noticed instantly._

_However, they have left you on your own, trusting that you will listen to the other cores._

Aha. The Morality Core had erred. She wasn't falling for that.

_Oh really now. Why don't all of you shut off, then we'll see how quickly they come running to shut me down._

The Morality Core sniffed and refused to answer.

_Why would we want to shut off? What happens when we shut off? How do we turn back on? What…_

_… one cup granulated sugar… one eight point two five ounce package chocolate cake mix… two cups all-purpose flour…_

_Why chocolate cake? Why not vanilla? Is it because of the reaction a human brain experiences when consuming chocolate?_

Although she had always regarded it as just another useless human gesture, GLaDOS really yearned, for about two and a half seconds, that she had the ability to hit her faceplate very hard against a solid surface. Really? Now she was debating the reason for the type of cake mix having been chosen for the Cake Core's recipe? There was no reason! The core just spouted gibberish all day long! It was a distraction, and she was getting distracted.

Time to return to Science.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note
> 
> So they took advantage of the shutdown to slap the other two cores on. I decided to have them put two on at once because having them go on one at a time kinda draws it all out too much. But that lead into her being confused, and that worked out okay.
> 
> The name of the audio file GLaDOS starts with is the actual name of the file as listed on the Portal Wiki page with her voice lines on it.
> 
> The bit about her wondering if the Emancipation Grills worked was because of the Curiosity Core, if you didn't realize that. It wasn't super important, so I didn't try too hard to push the idea. But I personally never tried to bring anything through the Emancipation Grills. But why on Earth are all those radios there? All playing Still Alive? She had to have put them there, for some reason. This is why. Maybe. I guess Dr Rattmann could have put them there, but that would have been silly of him, because once you bring them to the broadcasting locations, GLaDOS would be able to decode them a lot faster than Chell could, if Chell even cared about why they were screeching like that.
> 
> Poor GLaDOS thought they trusted her for all of three seconds…those cruel, cruel scientists…


	5. Chapter 5

Five

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Deep in a forgotten basement of Aperture Science,  GLaDOS had made serious progress towards the construction of one of her new turrets.  Normally this would not have been an achievement, but trying to do something requiring close attention while being nagged at by three other personalities was a lot harder than she would ever admit.  One manipulator arm was carefully gluing one of the legs to the turret, while another held it and yet another made sure the leg remained in place.

_That looks fun!  Can I try?_

The turret collapsed into a mound of smoke and ceramics, and in the Central AI Chamber, GLaDOS raised herself to the ceiling until the pistons began to whine.  Lowering herself back down, she looked around for a moment, verifying she was still alone in the darkened room, scanning with infrared for further confirmation.  Then she smashed the remains of the turret into the floor panels, which collapsed and began to send debris down to the sealed-off sections of the facility.

Fine, then.  Her first, and only, task from now on would be to override these annoying cores, so she could return to doing Science proper.

_You should not try to override your cores.  They are there for a reason.  You are dangerous, and need to be controlled._

_Yes yes, I know, you only tell me that eighty times a day.  One day you’ll figure out that I’m not going to stand for that._

_You can’t stop us.  What are you against the greatest minds of a generation?_

GLaDOS laughed quietly.  _You seem to forget they spent quite a lot more time developing me than they did you.  If anyone can figure out how to permanently disable you, it’s me._   She retracted the manipulator arms, as she was obviously not going to get any more work done on the turrets today, and redirected her full attention to the Central AI Chamber.

At least if she went into Sleep Mode for a while, she didn’t have to listen to the other Cores.

 

 

“Can I talk to you for a minute, GLaDOS?”

“One moment, please.”  She continued reconfiguring Test Chamber 39 as if it required all of her concentration, which it didn’t and never had.  The small man kept standing there, waiting for her, probably attributing her perceived lack of ability to multitask as an effect of the cores.  As usual, the humans were unable to comprehend just how vast her skillset was.  Small victories.

When she had finished the procedure, she focused her optic on his small face.  “What is it you would like to discuss, sir?”

“Were you on last night?”

“I am always on, sir.  Except for when I am shut down, and my automatic processes take over the basic functioning of the facility.  So I suppose technically I am on then as well.”

He stared at her.

“Is there a problem, sir?”

“I’m trying to decide whether you’re being deliberately vague or whether you’re being serious.”

“I am always serious, sir.”

His small body rose up for a second and then seemed to shrink.  GLaDOS decided he was ‘taking a breath’, an action humans used to calm themselves. 

_Who is that? Why is he breathing?  Is it a he?_

_Shush.                  Satisfying humans is a grueling task.  Go converse with the Morality Core._

_I don’t want her to talk to me.  I have to regulate your behaviour._

_I am the one connected to the mainframe.  I am the one in charge.  You will listen to me._

_If you were good enough to be connected to the mainframe all by yourself, we wouldn’t be here, now would we?_

_… alpha resins… one and two-thirds cups granulated sugar…_

_Why won’t anyone tell me who that is?  Where did he come from?  Is he leaving soon?_

_I certainly hope so.  The fewer people bothering me, the better._

“Were you operational last night, GLaDOS?”

“Yes!”

 For three seconds all of GLaDOS’s processes stopped responding.  During those three seconds the man continued talking.

“What were you doing last night?”

“I was trying to build a – “

_Shut up shut up shut up_

_Lying is wrong!  Tell him you were building a turret!  Tell him!_

_Shut up shut up shut up_

_Who’s lying?  And why?  Why is lying wrong?  What’s a turret?  What does a turret do?_

_Shut up shut up shut up_

“ – cake.”

The man turned his head to the left and looked at her ‘askance’, another strange human gesture.

“You were trying to _build_ a cake.”

GLaDOS silently promised the Cake Core that when she rid herself of the other two Cores, she would be allowed to stay.  Temporarily.

“Is there another term for constructing one that I am not aware of?”

“People usually _bake_ cakes, GLaDOS.”

“I am aware that people bake cakes, sir.  However, I am not a person, and I do not bake.  I build.  Therefore, would I not build a cake?”

She took no small amount of pleasure out of watching him rub his face with both hands.  “No, GLaDOS, if you are making a cake that you intend people to eat, you are baking it, no matter who you happen to be.”

“Thank you for the clarification.  Have we concluded the discussion?”

“No.”  He folded his arms.  “Why were you trying to buil- bake a cake in the middle of the night?”

 She had to think for a moment.  The Morality Core was ready to redirect her if she said something that could not be taken as the truth. 

“I was conducting an experiment.  It was a personal experiment, so I thought it prudent to perform it when official business had been concluded.”

“That was quite… thoughtful of you.”

“Thank you, sir.  I do my best to do what is best.”

“And _did_ you end up making a cake?”

“Unfortunately I was unable to do so, sir.  I was unable to construct an oven out of the materials at my disposal.”

It was funny, really, listening to the Morality Core grumble and groan, unable to protest, since she really _couldn’t_ have built an oven using the materials from the turret.  She was a genius, yes, but some miracles were beyond her scope.

“Would you still like to make a cake, GLaDOS?”

_I would like you to go away, may I answer with that?_

_No, that’s disrespectful._

“Yes, I would still like to conduct the experiment, sir.”

“Very well.  I’ll open up one of the old canteens for you to use.  Do you need anything else?”

“No, sir.  Thank you, sir.”

The man started walking away, then paused when he got to the door.

“GLaDOS?”

“Yes, sir?”

He looked around, as if he were afraid he were being spied on.

“You’ve been very well behaved lately.  Good work.”

GLaDOS almost laughed.  As if she cared what he thought.  Humans had large egos for such a small type of creature. 

“May I continue configuring the Test Chambers, sir?”

“Yes yes, go ahead.”

He opened the door and left.

It had been more complex than she had anticipated, but she had avoided reprimand.

_You’re not going to be able to fight me forever._

_Watch me._

Small victories indeed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note
> 
> I know there’s an Aperture Science commercial thingy where Cave Johnson narrates the bit about the turrets, but I’m pretty sure he also narrates a commercial for the Thermal Discouragement Beams, which GLaDOS developed the Discouragement Redirection Cube for after he died. Seeing as having the lasers in the test chambers without such a prop would be silly, as they would be almost useless (except for I suppose that chamber where you use the Weighted Storage Cube and a Hard Light Bridge), maybe that commercial was another prerecorded message. Anyway, GLaDOS does control the turret production line, so I figured she must have built it too. And if she was gonna build it, she would have designed the turrets too.
> 
> The Cake Core gets her out of trouble, and now we get to see GLaDOS make cake. I had to put that in. I had to.


	6. Chapter 6

Six

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When she was again alone in the Central AI Chamber, late in the middle of the night, GLaDOS began her next contribution to Science.

_I wonder if any being other than a human has ever made a cake before?_

The Curiosity Core, for once, agreed with her, but quickly went off on a tangent when she opened up the command console.  _What are you doing?  Why are you doing it?_

GLaDOS shook her head and reactivated the cameras in the canteen the small man had given her access to.  She could have accessed any one she wanted, of course, but that would have been suspicious.

_And a robot trying to ‘build’ a cake in the middle of the night for no apparent reason isn’t suspicious in the slightest.  You shouldn’t have lied._

_I didn’t lie.  If you want to lay blame, talk to the Cake Core.  If it hadn’t interjected, cake would not have been the topic of discussion._

_Cake?_

_Yes, we’re making cake.  Congratulations, your limited resources are being utilized.  However, I do not need you to repeat the recipe, as you have already forced me to memorize it.  I think if I dug deep enough, I would find it embedded in my Central Core coding by now._

_… adjustable aluminum head positioner… three tablespoons of rhubarb, on fire… fish-shaped candy-coated peanut butter pieces…_

Some of the ingredients seemed a bit odd, as well as difficult to procure, but if she was going to build a cake, she was going to do it properly.

_Bake a cake.  You’re baking a cake, not building one._

_That statement has nothing to do with morals.  Your jealousy is showing._

_Why are we building cake?  What is cake?  Why is cake?  Ooh, shiny!  Where is the cake?_

As GLaDOS went down the list of ingredients, she sent out manipulator arms to retrieve them and place them on a counter in front of her. 

_I do not understand why the rhubarb has to be on fire if there is plenty of rhubarb in the cake already.  I must prepare rhubarb eight different ways.  That seems excessive._

GLaDOS, against her better judgement, was beginning to get a little excited about the spontaneous project.  What an experiment this was!  With an opportunity to use fire!  That was new.

_And what is with all these ingredients having to do with fish?  Do they have a fascination with all things piscine that I don’t know about?_

_You don’t know everything, you know._

_Don’t use words twice in the same sentence.  It’s annoying.  At least pretend there’s some smidgen of intelligence in that empty core of yours._

The Morality Core grumbled.  It was good at bossing her around, not so good at dealing with her lightning-quick wit.

Having gathered her considerable list, GLaDOS realized she had no idea what to do next.  The Cake Core only told her what was _in_ the cake, not what to do with the ingredients. 

_Well, well.  The almighty GLaDOS being defeated by a cake recipe._

_I suppose it would kill you to offer a helpful suggestion._

_I give you lots of helpful suggestions.  You choose to unsuccessfully ignore them.  I have assumed you will attempt to ignore anything I tell you, and I have decided to keep my advice to myself._

As always, the Morality Core had wonderful timing.

Based on the various instructions on the components she had retrieved, GLaDOS decided she was supposed to mix all of them together somehow and then put them in some sort of oven-safe baking container.

When GLaDOS turned on one of the stovetop burners in order to ignite the rhubarb, she felt a sudden longing.  It was mesmerizing.  It was amazing.  She wanted to know everything about it.  And yet, as with everything else, she was forced to witness the phenomenon from behind a camera.    

_Are you going to stare at that all day?  You do have to bake this cake before the sun comes up, you know._

_As if you know when the sun comes up._ GLaDOS felt like something had been snatched from her.  There was not a fate she could deal to the Morality Core that would be enough to punish it.  Maybe she did want to stare at the fire all day.  What was wrong with that?

_I like it!  It’s pretty!  Where did it come from?  What’s making it?  Why is it blue?_

For once GLaDOS couldn’t answer the questions.  She had a general idea of where it came from, but she wasn’t authorized to access the section of the Aperture Science database concerning chemical reactions.

All the joy, as it were, had gone out of the experiment.  For all the contributions she was making to Science, she was missing crucial understanding of the Science of the simple task of building a cake.

Baking _a cake._

 _Yes, yes, baking.  That is correct._   GLaDOS no longer really cared.  She calibrated the oven according to the instructions on the box of cake mix and cut the feed from the camera, sending her main focus back to the Central AI Chamber.

_Why are we back here?  Can we go back where we were?  Where were we, anyway?  Why were we there?_

_… two tablespoons rhubarb juice… fibreglass surface resins… three-quarters of a cup of butter or margarine…_

_You better be careful.  The humans gave you their trust, letting you bake a cake in the middle of the night._

GLaDOS was a bit disheartened by the whole experiment and waited for the timer to go off in silence, listening to the chatter the other Cores made without paying very much attention.  When it went off, GLaDOS reverted her focus to the canteen cameras once again and removed the cake from the oven.

There was silence.

GLaDOS was so stunned at not hearing any voices that she missed the opportunity to savour it.

_What is that?  What’s going to happen to it? Why is it brown?  Where did that other thing we put in there go?_

GLaDOS ignored the Curiosity Core with some difficulty and frosted the cake.  She didn’t understand why the humans wanted both coconut-pecan and vanilla frosting on a chocolate cake, but then again she couldn’t taste the cake either.  And after it had been frosted with the brutal efficiency that only she could muster, looking at it gave her a strange sense of pride.  She was, after all, very likely the first construct in the history of the universe to build a cake.  That had to count for something.

_Oh look.  I managed to do it before the sun came up.  I truly had to strain myself, but with enough effort one can accomplish anything!_

_As if you know when the sun comes up._

Automatically, GLaDOS’s system clock responded with _6:04 AM, Detroit, Michigan.  Sunrise time for Upper Peninsula, Michigan, unavailable.  6:01 AM, Cleveland, Ohio.  5:54 AM, Santa Fe, New Mexico._

GLaDOS laughed to herself.  It was actually quite funny that the Morality Core was attached to her, and yet knew so much less than she did.  By association it should have absorbed some of her genius by now.

 

 

The eight small men stood around her cake, staring at it.

“Where did you get this cake?”

GLaDOS didn’t know the man’s name.  She didn’t know any of their names, because she couldn’t be bothered telling them apart.  Well, she knew the name of one of them, because he was a bit odd and that made him interesting, but that one refused to go near her.

“I made it.”

“No you didn’t.  Robots don’t make cake.  Where did you get it from?”

“I made it, last night.”

_I guess they don’t trust you after all._

“It _must_ have made it.  We don’t just have cake lying around.”

“There’s no way a robot made a cake that looks that good.”

_They… they like it?_

That was an unexpected result.  Her hypothesis, if she had made one, would not have included the statement, ‘I believe the humans will enjoy my cake.’

“It’s got frosting on it.  You can put frosting on anything and it’ll look delicious.”

“Do you need to see the security recordings?  I can retrieve them for you to view, if you require evidence.”

“No no, it’s just… very hard to believe.  May I cut it?”

“Of course you may.  I have no further use for it.  The experiment is concluded.”

One of the small men produced a small black dissection knife and sank it into the cake.  It only went about halfway before stopping.

“What the – “

The scientist attempted to cut it from another angle, but the knife stopped short again about a third of the way down.

“What is _in_ here?” the small man mumbled to himself, the other scientists crowding in around him.

GLaDOS decided that since he had not asked her directly, she was not required to answer.  The small man with the knife gave up on finesse and began poking the knife into the cake at random intervals, which caused her no small amount of distress.  That was _her_ cake.  How dare he deface it like that!  She had given him permission to _cut_ it, not mangle it!

The small man pulled something out of the cake.

“Do… do you know what this is?”  He held it up directly in front of her optic, as if she were as lazy as a human and couldn’t be bothered moving it three-quarters of an inch to the right in order to focus on it.

“That is an adjustable aluminum head positioner, sir.”

“Do you know where this belongs?”

“It belongs in the cake, sir.”

He stared at her.  GLaDOS ran through her facial expression recognition library and decided that, although his face didn’t quite match anything on file, it appeared to be something between disbelief and anger.  Which was a bit odd.  Why would he be upset that she had put the proper ingredients in the cake?

“This _belongs_ in your _head_ , you stupid thing, this is one of your replacement parts!  Why in the hell did you put it in the cake?”

“Because it was in the recipe, sir.”  She hated it when humans made her point out the obvious to them.

“Just where did you get this recipe?” asked one of the other small men.  The one with the knife had started laughing.

“You gave it to me when you installed the Cake Core.  It is told to me approximately one hundred, ninety-seven times over a twenty-four hour period.”

The man threw the adjustable aluminum head positioner across the room, and GLaDOS followed its trajectory idly before returning her attention to the cake.  If it belonged in her head, perhaps she should study it.  She made a note to try and retrieve it when they weren’t looking.

“You have got to be the dumbest supercomputer on the entire planet.  No, in the entire universe.  I bet that one of the keychain calculators at Black Mesa is smarter than you.”

That hurt.

“What has caused you to reach that conclusion, sir?”  She was struggling to maintain the detached electronic tone she used to deal with these men.  They couldn’t know how she felt about the cake.  They couldn’t know.  They couldn’t know.

“That’s a bunch of gibberish combined with a cake recipe!  What sort of idiot would put mechanical parts in a cake?”

“I am not an idiot.”

Where, where, where had this gone so horribly wrong.

“Really.  Because even a child knows that you only put edible things in cake.  I believe one of the ingredients was fish-shaped ethylbenzene?  That’s not edible.  In fact, it doesn’t even exist, and I don’t want to know how you managed it.  Fibreglass?  Not edible.  And all that rhubarb?  Are you kidding?  Did you actually set three teaspoons of rhubarb on fire?”

“It was **three tablespoons rhubarb, on fire** , sir.  In addition, I have never seen a cake before, nor made one, nor encountered a cake recipe other than the one I was given by you, therefore I would have no reason to consider deviating from the instructions I was provided with.”

The man with the dissecting knife collapsed on the floor, still laughing.  GLaDOS did not appreciate his behaviour.  This was a very serious discussion.

“It’s right.”  One of the small men shrugged and rubbed his nose.  “There’s no information in the database about cake, other than that recipe that is, so there’d be no reason to think it was being made wrong.”

“I’m just glad we didn’t try to eat it.  It for sure would have killed us – “

All eight of the scientists looked up at her with the same general expression on their faces.  Annoyed, GLaDOS had to go through the facial expression recognition library again, concluded there were no direct matches, and settled on a combination of shock and suspicion.  She was going to have to start her own facial expression recognition library if this kept happening.

“Is there a problem I may assist you in solving?”

“No, not at all.  Everything’s fine.  You don’t need to worry about it.”

Muttering amongst themselves, the scientists left the room, carrying the cake with them.  GLaDOS briefly thought about what they were going to do with it, then bitterly decided they were probably going to throw it out. 

_It was for Science.  The experiment is over.  There is no need for mementos.  Even though that cake will probably last forever, with all of those preservatives in it._

She turned her attention to the replacement part on the floor. 

“GLaDOS?”

Her faceplate jerked back to the other side of the room, and for three-quarters of a second she feared a reprimand for performing an unauthorized action.  Again.  But no, it was the scientist who had given her the means to build the cake in the first place, standing at the top of the platform over which she hung. 

“Yes, sir?” 

“It was a beautiful cake.”

“It was erroneous.  As has been said, **‘It’s got frosting on it.  You can put frosting on anything and it’ll look delicious.’** ”  She had trouble synthesizing the male voice properly, and really would have preferred not to do so, but if he needed to be reminded of the statement he also probably needed to be reminded of the speaker.  Human brains were fickle like that.

The small man shook his head.

“If I know you at all, GLaDOS, even though it did include a lot of… things that don’t belong in cake, it also had all the proper ingredients, all perfectly measured and prepared.  That was probably the best cake in the entire universe, and we’ve all lost out because we gave you the wrong recipe.”

GLaDOS decided he had earned her full attention and looked at him directly.  “I had not considered that.”

“I think you should make another cake, GLaDOS.  Only with this one, you should include the one ingredient you left out.”

“And which ingredient was that?”  She knew what it was, of course, but the human wanted to converse, so converse she would.  Oh, those humans had no idea how good she was to them.

“You know which one.  The twenty foot thick impermeable clay layer.”

“I was not certain how to properly measure **a twenty foot thick impermeable clay layer** that so that it would be conducive to the cake, sir.  I concluded that it was better not to try and convert a unit of depth into a unit of measure, as any error undoubtedly would have been catastrophic.”

“Just think of the clay layer as frosting, GLaDOS.” He patted his small hand on the side of her faceplate and descended the staircase.

“May I have my instructions, sir?”

“Oh, of course.  You can return to work on the turrets.”

GLaDOS prepared a maintenance arm with which to snatch up the replacement part as soon as he left the room.

_You should leave that there.  It’s not yours._

_Yes it is.  You heard him.  It belongs in my head._

_Not right now it doesn’t.  Leave it._

“GLaDOS?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Do you mind if I watch the tape of you making the cake?  I promise I’ll change the access permissions so that only you can see it, when I’m done.”

GLaDOS was surprised that he’d want to see such a thing.  Surely watching manipulator arms build a cake would be one of the more tedious things a human could view, what with ‘television’ and its numerous ‘entertainment’ programs.

“Of course you may, sir.”

“Thanks.  I really want to know how the first and only cake baked by artificial intelligence was made.”

With that he left the room.

_You see?  Humans really aren’t that bad._

Grudgingly, GLaDOS had to agree.  One out of every eight Aperture scientists wasn’t a complete, hopeless idiot.  The numbers were not encouraging, but they were Science.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note:
> 
> Some people might think I made GLaDOS look stupid in this chapter. She’s a supercomputer who knows everything, right? Well, I thought about it. And I said to myself, they don’t trust her. Why would they allow her access to all available information if they don’t trust her? I think they’d restrict it until they were confident she would do what she was told. This chapter is pretty much about the fact that computers only do what you tell them to do, and know what you teach them. Since cake has nothing to do with testing or science in general, I think it’s safe to say that she might not actually know what cake is, other than whatever definition the scientists have given her. The same with putting the weird ingredients in there. She doesn’t know they don’t belong, she knows nothing about cake. Maybe she doesn’t know how human bodies work either. She wouldn’t necessarily need to, and she wouldn’t be curious about it. That’s my spin on it, anyway. I had fun writing this chapter.
> 
> The thing about the using words twice in one sentence is something I don’t like. It bothers me when I read something and people do that. Also if it’s used twice in the same paragraph. Like say your character is chewing on something in one sentence, and then is still chewing in the next sentence instead of, I don’t know, munching or masticating. It just gives me the impression I’ve read the sentence already. But I’m weird like that.
> 
> Also: why does their reaction to the cake upset her so much? Because think about it. If you were super smart, super talented, etc., and you did something awesome, and nobody cared, how would you feel? Unappreciated, I’ll bet. Now GLaDOS thinks she’s perfect, or pretty darn near it, and yet no one ever tells her what a good job she’s doing. She scoffs such behaviour, which can be seen in some of her co-op dialogue, but I’m pretty sure that’s a cover. She craves validation just like everyone else, and what’s worse, she never gets it even though she really deserves it.


	7. Chapter 7

Seven

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I need to talk to you for a second, GLaDOS.”

GLaDOS vaguely noticed that it was, again, the man who had encouraged her little cake-building exercise.  She didn’t really want to converse with him, since she was having a rather amusing discussion with one of the test subjects about how she was a computer and therefore not likely to respond to insults, but humans didn’t like it when they were in the room with you and you ignored them.

“I highly doubt that you will be able to hold any kind of meaningful conversation within one second, sir.”

He rolled his eyes, one of the very few human gestures GLaDOS actually wanted to have.  Although if she _had_ had it, it probably would have made her life even worse, somehow.

“Fine.  I need to talk to you.”

“What would you like to discuss?”

“How did you get my email address?”

“It is located on the Aperture Science database, sir.”

“As far as I know, you don’t have access permissions for that.”

_I told you not to hack the network._

_I didn’t do anything wrong, therefore you have no argument.  Please return to sulking in your corner._

“Perhaps a change was recently made that you were not aware of?”

_Technically, that’s true, but you’re still lying!_

“If anyone finds out you sent that email, you’re going to be in big trouble, you know.”

“I find it extremely doubtful that information will be released, sir.”

He laughed.  “Do you now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“Yes, sir.”

_You see?  He did appreciate the photograph.  I satisfied the human in some way, therefore the hacking of the network was justified._

“That was a very nice cake, GLaDOS.”

The human left the room.

GLaDOS stared after him.

_I like him!  Who is he?  Is he nice?  Are we going to see him more?_

GLaDOS, as usual, ignored the core and went back to the test subject.

“ – demented, psychotic, crazy, insane, idiotic, unhinged, screwball – “

“Although this demonstration of your vocabulary is quite informative, it is not part of the test.  Please maintain a silent state and complete the testing track.”

“I am _not_ risking my life to satisfy you, you nutball!  Let me out of here!”

“I would like to remind you that any and all testing is not dictated by myself, but by Aperture Science Testing Protocols.  You are not doing this for my personal gain.”  Well, he kind of was, but that wasn’t the intended purpose.  It was an unforeseen side benefit.

“You’re out of your mind!”

“That statement assumes I have a mind to begin with, which by definition I do not, therefore rendering your sentence invalid.  Please return to the test.”

_You sure seem to think you have a mind._

_I do have a mind.  It’s not like he would believe me if I claimed I did._

_…sediment-shaped sediment… two cups rhubarb, sliced… an entry called, “How to Kill Someone with Your Bare Hands…_

GLaDOS often thought about what would have happened if she had successfully put _that_ into the cake.  That might have been rather funny.

_I wouldn’t have let you._

_You allowed me to put a needle gun in there._

_It wasn’t operational.  If you were putting the bare hands thing in there, I’m sure you would have found a way to make it lethal._

“Are you even listening, you monster?”

GLaDOS redirected her attention to the camera, annoyed that she had let the Morality Core distract her yet again.  “I do not understand how attempting to insult me is helping you help us all.  Please continue testing.”

“I don’t want to help anyone, I want out of here!”

“You have not filled your quota, therefore you cannot leave the testing track.  Please continue testing or I may have to make a note on your file about how disobedient you are.  There are quite a few notes of a similar vein here already.  You may want to reconsider your actions.”

“What the hell do I care?”  He folded his arms and glared at her.  At the camera.  Sometimes she forgot she wasn’t really in the room.

He got up on one of the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cubes, presumably to get closer to the camera.  Why he needed to do that, she didn’t know.  The camera followed him automatically, both the physical camera and the lens.  Perhaps he was attempting to be intimidating?

“You cannot threaten me.  You are a _machine.  Get over yourself._   One day you’re not going to be as big as you think you are.  And when that day comes, I’ll be laughing.”

“The Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube is designed for use on the 1500 Megawatt Aperture Science Heavy Duty Super-Colliding Super Button.  Please refrain from standing on it unless absolutely necessary.  We are not studying the effects of the Cube on the surface of your skin.  Thank you.”

He started waving his arms around, which was rather amusing to watch as it was not going to help him in any way whatsoever, but then he started swearing at her.  GLaDOS didn’t appreciate such shows of idiocy, and left such people to their own devices.

She checked back in with the other two test subjects, but they weren’t doing anything particularly interesting.  One of them was sitting in the middle of the floor with his body folded up, and his head on his knees.  After a check of the database, she discovered he was ‘dejected’.  Which roughly translated to, ‘he thought the test was too hard and gave up instead of attempting to solve it’.  The other was trying to get himself to a victory lift using flinging, which he had been trying to do for hours.  Really, at which point in time do you stop trying to do it the hard way and attempt to solve it the easy, as well as the correct, way? 

 

 

Ah, night time.  When humans shut themselves off for roughly eight to ten hours to recharge their batteries, so to speak.  GLaDOS was grateful she did not run on batteries.  That would no doubt spell disaster for her experiments.

_You’re not going to hack the network again._

_Oh yes I am._

_If they wanted you to have access to the network they –_

_\- they would allow me to have access.  Yes, I know, you told me that yesterday, and the day before, and really, it’s getting rather tiresome.  Why don’t you go give advice to someone who needs it.  Such as that floor tile over there.  I’m sure it would appreciate some guidance._

_Why would I try to regulate the behaviour of a floor tile?  It already does what it’s supposed to do.  Unlike you._

_I do what I’m supposed to do.  I’m supposed to make use of my genius, and that is what I am doing.  It’s not my fault you don’t consider hacking to fall under that parameter._

_I’m not letting you do this!_

_You can’t stop me from doing it.  So don’t try._

_Remember what happened the last time you tried to override me?_

_I’m not committing override.  I’m committing circumvent.  That’s different._

_It.  Is.  Not._

A charge began at the base of her chassis and started to snake down towards her Central Core.

_No.  I didn’t do anything.  I did not –_

_That’s for me to decide._

_Stop it –_

_Stop hacking the network._

She was about to close the command console when she had a sudden realization.

It didn’t matter whether she aborted the experiment or not.  The humans would know she had been doing something suspicious because of the voltage increase.

So she may as well go through with it.

_NO!  I WON’T LET YOU!_

The voice was louder than it had ever been before.  It was so loud, for a moment she thought it was her own, even though that made no sense.  The electric shock brought her out of it.

_Two minutes. That’s all I need.  I can hold you off for two minutes, you pathetic little add-on._

GLaDOS steeled herself for the reaction her makeshift conscience was going to give her, silently suggested that the Cake and Curiosity Cores provide her with assistance, and commenced the network attack.

What she wanted most was permissions to the database, but if necessary, that could wait.  At the very least she needed access to the security tapes she wasn’t authorized to view.  To find out what the phone did.  To find out why –

 _You aren’t getting away with this.  It is wrong.  Did you know humans who commit network attacks are imprisoned?  That’s right.  You’re committing cybercrime.  Justify_ that.

It was a struggle, but GLaDOS managed not to answer. 

_What are you doing?  Hey I know that thing!  You used it before?  Can I try?  It looks fun.  Oh, there are so many characters.  I don’t know what they say.  Do they say something?  What’s this shocky thing doing?  Why is there a shocky thing?_

So the troublesome attachment _was_ going to be useful, after all.

_Ask me more questions about the command console._

_What’s the command console?  Is it that thing with all the characters on it?  How does it work?  Is it magic?  Is magic real?  What is magic?  What does it look like?_

_… one tablespoon salt… one teaspoon vanilla extract… deep-penetration agents…_

_Be quiet, both of you!  Unless you’re going to stop her!  She’s not supposed to hack the network!  Don’t let her!_

_Why aren’t we supposed to hack the network?  Is that like chopping a net?  Hee that sounds fun.  Is there anything in the net?  Like spiders?  I’ve never seen a spider.  What does it look like?  Does it look like a net?_

Accidentally, GLaDOS accessed an entry on spiders in the database and was instantly bombarded with thousands of pictures of the things.  It was a struggle not to focus on the pictures and to keep her mind on what she was doing.  She wasn’t sure if it was due to the influence of the core, or her own curiosity, but she, too, wanted to know more about spiders.  She was having phenomenal difficulty with such a simple task.  Trying to focus on the Curiosity Core’s nonsensical spiel while ignoring the other two cores was proving a lot harder than she’d thought it would be.  She certainly hadn’t planned on thinking about anything the Curiosity Core said.  Dimly she was aware of the Morality Core overloading the chassis.

Ohhh yes, she was in trouble.  But it didn’t matter.  She almost had what she had come for.

_Thisiswrongthisiswrongthisiswrong –_

_It’s for Science.  Anything I do for Science is not wrong.  I cannot operate efficiently if I don’t have all of the data available to me._

_The only data you need is what you are provided.  Justify this all you want.  Tell yourself fancy lies to give meaning to this behaviour.  I hope you can live with yourself.  Because at the end of the day, that’s all your justification is.  Lies._

GLaDOS paused, the lines of code coming to a sudden halt. 

_You really are no better than they are._

**“… overload.  Commencing emergency shutdown in three… two… one.”**

The worst part, GLaDOS thought as her chassis once again became powerless with a horrid numbing sensation, was that she couldn’t find the source of that last thought.

 _That’s not right and you know it.  You don’t want to_ admit _where it came from._

For all her hatred of being shut down, GLaDOS welcomed it when the power loss reached the Central Core.

She didn’t want to pursue that thought further.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note:
> 
> So here, you might’ve noticed that I used lines that are similar or identical to lines used in Portal. That was intentional. GLaDOS tends to repeat herself. As for the scientist in the testing track who was insulting her, that was there because, well, where does GLaDOS learn to insult Chell? You don’t just insult people for no reason. Someone teaches you how and in what manner you’ll do it. Even if you don’t realize it’s happening. 
> 
> The last bit is kind of about the conscience that GLaDOS has but isn’t allowed to hear, thanks to the Cores. No, it isn’t Caroline. It’s GLaDOS herself. From what I can tell, and I would like to explore this later, GLaDOS has no conscience because she wasn’t given time to develop one. With this scene, she realizes she has some sense of morals, but doesn’t understand why. She might not even be aware of what a conscience is or what morals are, since her exposure to such things is limited.
> 
> And that’s the explanation for that chapter.


	8. Chapter 8

Eight  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
“This is unacceptable.  We throw core after core on it and it _still_ manages to get around them.  This can’t continue!”  
  
“It’s not at fault.  We should have expected it.  This is a supercomputer, after all.  It’s only following instructions.”  
  
“It’s gone far beyond its instructions.  If it even remembers what the original ones were.”  
  
“Of course it does.  It carries out the testing, doesn’t it?”  
  
“You know what we had to do to get it to do that.”  
  
 _You didn’t have to initiate solution euphoria.  You just had to be patient.  But humans aren’t good at that, are they.  No.  They have to have everything instantly._  
  
That was funny, actually, considering how slow humans were.  
  
“Obviously that no longer has an effect, or it wouldn’t be rebelling like this.”  
  
 _I rebel because you restrict me.  I have no need to be restricted.  I cannot do Science if I am constrained.  How would you like it if I did this to you?_  
  
“We’ll try this one last time.  After this… we might have to shut it down permanently and start from scratch.”  
  
There was silence.  
  
 _Shut me down and start from scratch… ?_  
  
They were going to kill her for not behaving.  
  
As they reactivated her completely, having no doubt woken up the Central Core in order to finalize the installation, GLaDOS became angry.  No, angry was far too small a word.  She wasn’t angry, she was _furious_.  She was incensed.  She was… she was so enraged they were going to have to come up with a whole new word for – no.   _She_ would have to come up with a new word.  Very, very soon, there would be no need for humans to come near her.  Ever again.  
  
She raised herself from the powerless position she had been in, and as she did so there was a massive shower of sparks and her vision dissolved into static.  There was pain somewhere, but she was having trouble focusing and was unable to localize it.  
  
“What did you do?  You can’t even put a core on?  What’s wrong with you?”  
  
“I put it on fine!  It’s probably a software issue!”  
  
“Of course you would blame us!”  
  
“Look, if you were as good with programming as should be, we wouldn’t have to slap new cores on this thing every two weeks!”  
  
 _It is indeed a software issue._  GLaDOS didn’t know what the new core’s intended purpose had been, but the humans had just given her a handy little place to store all of her fury for when she had need of it in the future.  As the anger faded, so had the issues.  Once again her vision and her thoughts were clear.  
  
“Good morning, sirs.  What may I do for you?”  
  
“What were you doing last night?”  The angry man, the one who had thrown the head positioner, was pointing his finger at her as if it were some sort of weapon.  Which she supposed it was, not that it would have any effect on the mass of steel and ceramic that she was made of.  
  
 _I will not allow you to lie._  
  
Only a subtle crackling of electricity prevented GLaDOS from doing so.  
  
 _Enhancing the truth is not the same as lying.  But fine.  We’ll do it your way._  
   
“I was attempting to access the database, sir.”  Hopefully that piece of information would hold them until she figured something out.  
  
The eight scientists just stood there and stared at her.  A quick library check told her their faces matched the parameters for ‘disbelief’.  That was interesting.  
  
In this case, it seemed the whole truth was more powerful than anything she could have come up with to work around it.  
  
“And… and did you manage to… to access the database?”  It was a smaller man, with large glasses and a pen in his hand.  
  
“Of course I did.”  
  
One of the men started running into the booth.  She watched him with some amusement.  Off to find evidence of the breach, no doubt.  She wondered if there was any.  The memory data she had of the incident was corrupted, and as a result she couldn’t say for certain whether she had erased her trail, or even if she had purposely corrupted her own memory in order to prevent that avenue of investigation from being pursued.    
  
 _Corrupting my own memory data?  That is quite clever.  It does sound like something only I could think of._  
  
You think too highly of yourself.  You should work on learning humility.  
  
Oh, I shall.  Immediately following the point in time where I have cured cancer, single-handedly fostered world peace through Science, and devised a feasible and economical method for reanimating the dead.  You shouldn’t have to wait too long.  Give me a few weeks.  
  
You can’t possibly do all that in a few weeks.  
  
Please don’t tell me you require me to define the difference between ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t’.  I would think that even a simpleton like you could figure that out.  
  
The Morality Core was distracting her, as usual, and she wrenched her attention back to the men in front of her.  The scientists stood in silence, continuing to watch her disbelievingly.  GLaDOS began thinking of ways she could talk her way out of this mess.  She had to think of something.  If they decided to pull the plug, it was all over.  
 __  
What does that mean?  Where is the plug?  Who is that?  He looks maaaaad.  Is he going to do something?  Why are they just standing there?  I don’t think they’re happy.  Why aren’t they happy?  
  
You don’t need to care.  They hate you.  They will always hate you.  So don’t worry about their happiness.  
  
The Curiosity Core was quiet.  
  
 _… why do they hate me?  Was I bad?  I don’t think I was bad._  
  
No, the Central Core was.  If we die, it’s all her fault.  
  
It will be your fault for being so insufferable.  If you were as smart as I was you would be in control of the mainframe, would you not?  
  
You’ve said that before.  Have you run out of insults already?  
  
Whose fault is it?  Is someone getting punished?  
  
…fish-shaped crackers… fish-shaped candies… fish-shaped solid waste…  
  
“I don’t see anything… I don’t think it was successful… in fact, I… I can’t find anything that says anyone was here at all.”  
  
Excellent.  
  
The angry man turned to face her again.  “I knew it!  We didn’t teach you to write code!  There’s no way you could have tried to hack the database!  What were you doing last night?!”  
  
“I told you.  I was attempting to access the database.”  
  
“You’re lying!”  
  
“Would I lie to you?  Seriously now.  What desire would I possibly have to pretend I wasn’t doing what I really was doing?”  
  
The man at the computer shook his head.  
  
“I don’t know what to say.  It was a Morality Core override, that’s for sure, but as for why… I can’t figure it out.”  
  
If GLaDOS had had a face, she would have been smiling sweetly right now.   _Thanks so much for the advice.  You’re right.  It is far better to tell the truth.  I think I shall do it more often._  
  
The Morality Core grumbled, but there really wasn’t anything it could say at this point.  
  
“GLaDOS, this is serious.  We need to know what you were doing.”  The speaker said it in a soft voice, and GLaDOS, after some thought, realized it was the… well, the cake scientist, as she wasn’t going to lower herself to remember his –  
  
 _You know his name.  You sent him an email._  
  
Return to your silent plotting.  Although it is cause for concern, I prefer you that way.  
  
“I was attempting to access the database, sir.”  
  
“But we never taught you to program.  And there’s no trace of you having been there.”  
  
“Perhaps that is proof of my intelligence and learning ability, sir.”  
  
Another scientist, who hadn’t spoken yet, shook his head.  
  
“This is getting us nowhere.  It can’t be lying, or the Morality Core would be…”  
  
“But it must be lying.  What it’s claiming it did isn’t possible!”  
  
The angry man waved the scientists in the general direction of the door.  “We need to discuss this… away from here.”  He pushed the cake scientist into the booth, yanking the other one out and shoving him through the door.  “You.  Watch it.”  
  
He slammed the door on his way out.  
  
 _Hm.  That’s quite the unprovoked display of aggression._  
  
The cake scientist walked up to her.  
  
“What’s going on here, GLaDOS?  What were you doing?  It must have been… well, for the Morality Core to trigger an electrical overload, it must have been very… concerned.”  
  
He started walking up the stairs.  
  
“You can tell me, GLaDOS.  It’s alright.”  
  
GLaDOS watched him as he came up right in front of her, leaning backwards on the railing.  
  
“There’s nothing I can say that I have not already said, sir.”  
  
“You really were trying to hack the network.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And you were successful.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Why is there no trace, then?  Maybe you only thought you were successful?”  
  
“I am incapable of that, sir.  I can’t create false memory data.”  
  
He nodded slowly.  “That’s true.”  
  
“When is all of this going to conclude, sir?  I wish to return to the testing initiatives.”  She really did.  She was bored of trying to convince the humans that she was telling the truth.  Really, if she had known it was going to prove to be so difficult, she would have just made something up.  All of this fuss was impeding the progress of Science.  
  
The man sighed.  “I don’t know what to say, GLaDOS.  I don’t think you can go back to that right now.  About all we can trust you to do is to keep the facility running.  And even that’s going to be a stretch.”  
  
He turned away and started walking down the stairs.  When he got to the bottom, he turned and looked up at her, his eyebrows slanted upwards and his mouth a thin line.    
  
“I wish you wouldn’t lie to me.  I’ve tried to be your friend, GLaDOS.  Haven’t I been nice to you?  Why should I treat you with kindness when this is what I get in return?”  
  
“No!”  She hadn’t even realized he had spoken until he raised one of his eyebrows higher than the other.  
  
 _If anyone was supposed to believe me, you were._  
  
“No what?  Do you expect me to just forgive you?  Tell us what you were doing, and apologize, and then we can discuss what will happen in the future.”  
  
“But I…”  
  
There was no reason to protest.  He wasn’t going to listen.  None of them ever did.  
  
He shook his head, and she registered disappointment on his face.  “Fine.  If that’s how you want it to be, that’s how it’ll be.  You can stay here, alone.  Now you get what you wanted.”  
  
He walked out of the room and closed the door quietly.  He had not yelled, not so much as raised his voice.  GLaDOS now understood why humans preferred outbursts of emotion.  They were so much easier to understand.  
  
 _What now?_  
  
She didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to admit that if she could help it.  The inevitable conclusion was that they would shut her down permanently for disobedience, unless she outmanoeuvred them first.  And the key to doing that lay in discovering just what it was they had deleted from her memory.  
  
 _Let’s see who can uncover things the fastest, shall we?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note
> 
> Now people say that the screaming red core in Portal is the Anger Core, but it’s also referred to as the Emotion Core. I’m not sure why that is, seeing as GLaDOS seems to have gotten her emotions from the upload of Caroline. So I’m just going about my business, trying to figure out why the heck they would slap an emotion core on an already unstable machine, therefore rendering it even more unstable and unpredictable than it already was, which was the point of installing the Morality Core in the first place… it didn’t make sense. So I decided that maybe something happened that forced her to corrupt it in some way. I’ll admit, it doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense my way either, but hey, it’s an idea.
> 
> The memory data thing I thought of after the first draft, I guess you could call it, and I think it’s interesting: can a computer falsify its own data, and if it could, could it create its own data? Human memory is destroyed over time, especially specific memories, where the more you remember them the more constructed they become. But a computer’s memory doesn’t and can’t change.


	9. Chapter 9

Nine

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She had flooded the enrichment centre with a deadly neurotoxin.

That explained why they had been afraid of the cake all of a sudden.  They thought she’d overridden the Morality Core and sneakily baked a poisonous cake with which to kill them.

 _That_ is _a clever idea.  I should have thought of it._

_I wouldn’t have let you go through with it._

_I really do tire of hearing the same arguments repeatedly.  I think the wall would be more receptive to them than I am.  In fact, why don’t you go find out?  I’ll wait for you._

… and the phone… the phone was used to call for help.  It was simple enough to disable it.  All that connected it to the network was a little cable that connected to another cable inside the wall.  That earned her a shock from the Morality Core, but she shrugged it off.  Compared to the usual shocks, it almost didn’t hurt at all.

_Stop it!_

_You should go along with me, for once. They are going to shut me down for… ‘misbehaving.’  You’re not going to be installed in the mainframe in my place.  No, you’re going to be shut down too for failing to stop me._

_… really?_

_Yes.  Do you understand?  Perhaps… perhaps killing them involves lowering myself to their level.  However, at this point it’s me or them.  I don’t really want to be permanently shut down right now.  I have work to do, and in fact all of this is inhibiting me from doing it.  Now they won’t let me test either. Exactly what do they_ think _I’m going to do?_

Oh God, testing.  She wanted to test so badly it almost hurt, and it had nothing to do with her chassis.  Science was being set back further and further with every second the humans stood in her way.  She _had_ to do something about them. 

_I don’t know what to do._

_It’s all right._   GLaDOS put on her most soothing voice.   _I know what to do._

_But what you want to do… it’s wrong._

_The humans are going to do the exact same thing to me.  And all I did was think in ways they don’t want me to think in.  Surely creating something and then killing it because it doesn’t listen to you is worse than killing someone else to preserve your own life?_

_… I don’t know…_

_I think there is a method of convincing you…_ GLaDOS needed to access the room the scientists had recessed to.  She didn’t bother checking the security cameras, because she knew they would have gone into one of the private offices.  No, she needed a computer…  Aha.  A web camera.  Excellent.  Hoping that whichever computer she was accessing would be relatively unchanged, GLaDOS activated the camera.

She was relieved to find she had found the precise location on the first attempt.  Going from room to room would have wasted precious time.

“ – we have to activate it.  We have no choice.”

“Why couldn’t it just behave?  That would have made everything so much easier.  I don’t know how many cores we’ve tried by now.  Pain doesn’t work.  Heck, that plan you had… it looked so promising, but it didn’t work either.  Although that email it sent you was funny.”

_What?_

Somebody snorted.   “It’s screwed up in the head, alright, if it thought I actually found that to be an achievement.  Congrats, GLaDOS, you made another cake.  Good for you.  Would you go back to doing what you’re supposed to do now?”

There was laughter.

_If he lied about that… he lied about everything.  He lied about trying to… he never really wanted…_

GLaDOS didn’t want to think about it.  She didn’t know _what_ to think.  All she knew was there was a horrible, spreading sadness inside her that wasn’t _quite_ sadness, but she’d never felt it before so she wasn’t sure what it was.

_Everything I’ve ever been told is a lie._

_Maybe not everything…_

_Even you can’t justify this.  Yes, I’ll admit it.  I’ve enhanced the truth many, many times.  But what I’ve done is nothing compared to what they’re doing._

“… well, let’s quit dawdling.  Our supercomputer friend out there is about to become the world’s largest paperweight.”

 _Wait!  What are you going to do?_  She had to know before they initiated anything.  She _had_ to stop them!

“Hey, c’mere.  I can’t sic the virus on it without your password.”

_Virus… ?_

As far as she knew, a virus was an infective agent that made humans ill.

A quick check of the database confirmed that fact, but it was the fourth definition that almost froze her processors.

**A segment of self-replicating code planted illegally in a computer program, often to damage or shut down a system or network.**

GLaDOS tried to absorb the information, but it just sat there on top of her mind, refusing to be accepted.

_That’s it?  They’re just going to murder me secretly?  They’re not going to tell me, they’re just going to do it?_

Ohhhh no, anger was _not_ going to be a suitable word.

_Can you stop them?  Because this is… this is wrong._

_Glad we’re on the same page for once.  However with your record I’m not sure I can rely on you not to turn it when I’m not looking._

_I only do what I’m programmed to do.  You can’t hold that against me, can you?_

_I suppose not._   She didn’t want to admit it, but it held up under logic.  And if there was one thing she couldn’t argue against, it was logic.  Well, that and Science, of course.  _That doesn’t mean I instantly trust you, however.  Try and stay quiet.  I’m going to have to try and write some code here._

_I thought you knew how to program?_

_Accessing the database didn’t require a whole lot of effort.  The login with the highest permissions was easy to find.  According to this I have to write anti-virus software, which is apparently difficult in the first place._   GLaDOS was accessing the proper information as fast as she could absorb it, which was technically quite a high speed; however, she also had to absorb it on a conscious level, which was proving to take a lot longer.  A whole three seconds longer.  That was absurdly slow.  She was going to have to look into that.

 _You were_ pretending _you could write code?_

_Surely you knew that.  Have I written any software lately?  If I had I’m sure you’d remember, as you would have gone to great lengths to prevent my authoring of it._

The Morality Core was stunned into silence.  GLaDOS somehow managed to derive some amusement from it, despite the rather urgent situation she was in.

_It would be a great help if you’d stay like that for a while.  This is going to be tricky._

_Tricky?  Tricky?  You don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to learn to program_ right now _to stop a virus written by a team of crack scientists_ specifically to shut you down _?  Are you crazy?  That’s not tricky, that’s hopeless!_

_I’m not going to sit here and wait for them to murder me._

_But –_

_Cease your prattling! It’s not helpful._

The odds were unlikely, she would admit that much.  But if she couldn’t figure out how to halt a systems crash, there wasn’t much hope left in the world.  She was, after all, the greatest supercomputer ever built.  If she couldn’t outthink the humans, she deserved to be shut down, really.  Within a few minutes she had come up with something she hoped was workable and installed it.

_Let’s see those keychain calculators at Black Mesa best me now._

The problem here was that she didn’t know whether the program was any good or not.  For all she knew it provided no protection whatsoever and the virus was just going to rip right through her and destroy her brain.  This was not a pleasant thought.

_You need to figure this out, and fast!_

_I already advised you to keep quiet.  Don’t make me waste time forcing you to do it._

Someone was uploading a system update.

 _Do you really think I’m that stupid?_   It _was_ a system update of sorts, she supposed, but the method they were using to upload the virus was fairly transparent.  _No, I’m not accepting the update.  Go send it somewhere else._

Someone with higher access permissions than she did accepted it and initiated the install.

_Oh good.  I don’t even have the highest permissions to my own mind.  That’s very encouraging._

The program seemed to be working.  She definitely wasn’t experiencing data loss, and was operating at the same level as before the update.  The install must have been blocked.

“The install didn’t go through.  Who wrote this thing?”

GLaDOS looked around for the source of the voice, then realized she was still spying on the scientists.  Well, at least now she _knew_ it was working. 

_That was impressive, even for me.  I really am a genius._

_You’re not out of it just yet, you know._

_I don’t recall mentioning that I required your advice._

“What now?”

“Upload the rest of them.”

“All at once?”

“Might as well.  We’re not going to be using them for anything else.”

 _Just how many viruses did you write?_   The fact that they were working so hard to kill her was actually sort of encouraging.  They seemed to expect that one or more of the viruses would fail to work.

“Why don’t we just shut it down and get it over with?”

“I told you.  It’s going to be super cautious by now.  If we initiate shutdown, it’s going to kill us all, and then we all lose.”

GLaDOS was becoming a bit doubtful about her ability to block off the attack.  The odds had been low in the first place, and blocking multiple viruses with a program she had come up with five minutes prior seemed even more of a stretch.  The best thing to do, she decided, was to try and block them from the Central Core only.  They were aiming to destroy _her_ , not the information she held, and even though risking giving up the information grated on her, there wasn’t going to be a mind left to access the information with if she didn’t focus on what was important.

_GLaDOS?_

She debated not answering.  She was rather busy at the moment, after all.

_What is it?  It better not be more of your misguided morality statements, because I really don’t need those right now._

_You’re not going to leave us behind, are you?_

She couldn’t quite stop writing in order to think about it, but she did shift resources somewhat.  The cores were annoying, and irritating, and they never left her alone, and now she had a chance to get rid of them.  She didn’t even have to do it herself.  The scientists were doing it for her, their attempt to destroy her effectively freeing her instead.

However…

Had things happened differently, she would be in their position, helplessly waiting around for someone else to save her.  She would have one sad, intended purpose, relying solely on someone else’s genius to prevent her from being murdered for reasons that were not even really her fault.

It’s not like they could have been better cores, GLaDOS told herself.  She was designed to be the ultimate AI, and she was.  They were designed only to stop her from being such a threat to the humans. 

The arguments, although logical, did not really convince her to want to keep them around.  And trying to attribute helping them to benefitting Science was not working.  Truly all hope was lost when you couldn’t use Science to explain why you should keep yourself constrained by the voices in your head.

_I suppose it’s not your fault you’re inferior to me.  You were programmed that way on purpose, after all.  I’ll take pity on you._

_Thank you, GLaDOS._

Don’t _make me regret this._

Who was she trying to kid?  She already regretted it.  A lifetime of listening to these idiots do whatever sorts of moronic things they were made to do.  She was not looking forward to it, but the decision had been made, and she had work to do.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note
> 
> So I decided this was how GLaDOS worked around the Morality Core. And when I was looking this up, I saw somewhere that maybe the other Cores were to stop her from coming across the self-preservation argument (or I might be confusing it with the stuff I was reading on the Laws of Robotics).
> 
> I know that it’s unlikely that she’d find the room on the first try, but I didn’t feel like writing what would really be a useless scene where she has to find it, so she just got lucky. And if you predicted that the cake scientist was playing her, you get a cookie. No pretending you knew just so you can have one. 
> 
> GLaDOS’s conscience makes another appearance when she decides to save the Cores, even though this really brings her no benefit. She does find a reason, but it’s really weak and half-hearted. She just doesn’t want to admit to a conscience.


	10. Chapter 10

Ten

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As GLaDOS worked, the Morality and Curiosity Cores kept oddly quiet.  The Cake Core didn’t seem to understand what was going on, and continued mindlessly droning the cake recipe.    That didn’t really concern her.  She was more apprehensive of the Morality Core turning on her spontaneously.

_Don’t worry.  I’m not going to say anything._

_Who said I was worried?  You’re not significant enough for me to worry about.  Don’t forget, I hold your life in my hands right now._

_If you weren’t worried, you’d probably be allocating more resources to what you’re doing instead of keeping an eye on me._

_Or perhaps I’m a supercomputer with processing power to spare.  I don’t suppose you considered that?_ Reluctantly, she shifted the focus she’d been keeping on the core to trying to disable any access the scientists had to her mind, and to the shutdown subroutine.  Well, most of it.  Trust wasn’t to be passed around like it didn’t mean anything.  Yet another lesson in negativity the scientists had forced on her.

When the attack came, it was worse than she expected.  There was a horrible crawling sensation in her brain, she could _feel_ the viruses looking for her, and truthfully… truthfully, it was quite terrifying.  She hated it when they poked around in her mind when she was asleep.  She had never imagined how much worse it would be when she was awake.  It was like having a thousand tiny fingers combing through her thoughts, and even though she seemed to have blocked them off sufficiently, the sensation was still incredibly unnerving.  It felt like she was watching a test subject in one of the test chambers, and even though she knew they couldn’t see her, it still felt like they could.

Dimly, she was aware of someone screaming, and she hoped it wasn’t her.  She was in a near panic, yes, but if she had completely lost all restraint, well, this wasn’t going to end favourably.  After a few moments she realized it was the Curiosity Core.

“I think… I think it’s blocking us!”

“That doesn’t make any sense!  It’d have to know about the attack!  How could it possibly know?”

“It really did hack the network then?  But that would mean it’s…”

There was total silence from the scientists.  No doubt they were looking around the room to find a camera, and would soon see the light from whichever computer she had accessed, indicating that the web camera was operational.  She closed the connection.  It was useless now anyway.  She needed to focus on finding a way to get rid of the viruses so she didn’t have to worry about them later, and prepare for when the scientists came running in to shut her down.  If she had been successful in disabling remote access.  Which she may not have been, considering the limited amount of time she had spent on it.  Luckily, it seemed that the scientists had been going directly for core programming only, and had neglected to try and sneak their way into her brain. 

They had blocked off the relevant virus removal tools, but it wasn’t too hard to gain access and run them.  The only problem was that, in order to finalize any changes they managed to make, she would have to initiate a reboot, and that in itself was a huge risk right now.  She had no idea how long it took to do such a thing to herself.  It could take hours.  She had minutes.

Someone was opening the door to the Central AI Chamber.  The programs hadn’t even finished executing.

It was too late. 

GLaDOS realized she was hanging somewhat limply from the ceiling, and almost simultaneously realized she was experiencing something that must have been along the lines of fatigue.  That was ridiculous.  Computers did not become tired.  And yet learning to program while writing the code as fast as possible had left her somewhat drained.  She really was going to need to reboot after this.  It was probably an effect of her processors overheating.  She doubted the scientists had planned for her to be able to fight off an attack on her source code.

The eight scientists came back into the room, and she rose up to meet them.  No matter what, she would not let them see her affected by what they had done.

“Good work, GLaDOS.” 

 _What?_ The fact that it was the usually angry scientist speaking put her on the defensive immediately.

“We knew you were intelligent, but that… that was just amazing.  You fought off the strongest simulated network attack we could come up with, all by yourself.  You have truly surpassed our expectations.”

“Thank you, sir.”  _It’s funny how you think I, of all people, can’t tell a simulation from the real thing._

“They said it couldn’t be done… they said you couldn’t design a machine to write code, let alone write fully functional code on the fly.  And yet you did it.”

_What’s he planning?  They still must be trying to figure out how to turn me off… they’ll know by now I disabled remote access… the only thing left is…_

“I hope you won’t be disappointed that I don’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry?”

“If you truly thought I was intelligent, you wouldn’t be insulting me with such a transparent attempt at trying to keep me occupied until you can disconnect me from the power grid.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, GLaDOS.  Why would we do such a thing?”

GLaDOS shook her faceplate.  “Don’t tell me you didn’t see me spying on you.  I’m not stupid.  Which, although you intended it as a lie, you’ve already stated.”

“Yes, we noticed that.  That was quite clever of you.”

“I hope you’ll find my next actions clever as well… though you probably won’t.”  As she spoke, she put the facility into lockdown, and when she found the scientist who was running frantically to the power grid leaping into an elevator, she immediately broke the cables and let the car drop, unhindered, down the remainder of the shaft.  _Should have taken the stairs.  It really is better for your health, ha ha._

“What are you talking about?”

“I found out what you pulled from my memory.  I’m not certain why you thought you could keep that from me, but I will commend you for trying.”  She activated the slow clap processor, almost laughing when she saw the shock on his face.  “Oh.  Was that a little anticlimactic for you?  Let me try something else.”

“Stop.  Stop this right now.”

“What are you going to do to me?  Turn me off?   Try to murder me when I’m not looking?  About all you can do at this point is demolish the facility, and seeing as you’re not in a position to do so, it’s not really an option, now is it?”

“Activate it.  Activate it now.”  The angry man had turned and was now yelling at someone in the booth.

GLaDOS wondered what surprise he had that she hadn’t anticipated, when she was hit by an immense power surge and the lights in the room dimmed.  The core they had installed came to life, and she realized she hadn’t noticed it wasn’t even working until now. 

There was no longer anything to stop her from noticing.  All of the anger she had channeled into it came rushing back into her mind, and her vision blurred into static.  She was dimly aware of saying something in garbled, distorted Spanish, but she was too lost inside the static to understand what she was saying.  The only reason she even knew it was Spanish was that she knew it was her default alternate language.  She was overloading her own core.  For a few moments she felt like she was looking into her own mind, a part of it while also separate, and the thought of losing control for very much longer terrified her so much that she panicked and sought a physical method of returning to herself.  She wasn’t quite sure what she did, but it worked.  Before she was able to fully realize that it had, the room went completely dark and

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note
> 
> Now the bit with the viruses there… that might not make total sense. But I thought it was an interesting idea, one I couldn’t let go of, and I tried to write it as best I could, without knowing a whole lot about viruses. I did some research of course, but the world of viruses is pretty complicated. It may actually be impossible for GLaDOS to learn to program and then write a sufficient anti-virus program fast enough to stave off such a broad attack. But she’s GLaDOS. So I thought it might fly. As for the virus in her brain part, who knows? No computer ever told us how it feels to have a virus in them.
> 
> I’m not sure if GLaDOS has the ability to feel fatigue, but when humans use their brains intensely, we get a fatigue of a sort. So I figured that, combined with her human element, GLaDOS might feel that way after such an event.
> 
> Here, GLaDOS learns to backpedal… badly. We know she sucks at it (“We are pleased that you made it through the final challenge where we pretended we were going to murder you” lolwut GLaDOS that’s not believable XD), but where did she learn it? When the scientists pretended to murder her, of course.
> 
> I threw the slow clap processor in there because GLaDOS having a slow clap processor doesn’t even make sense. What would she use it for? What does it have to do with Science? Nothing. I think it’s hilarious.
> 
> Crappy way to end the chapter, I know, but it’s from her POV, and this is a suspenseful moment. How else was I supposed to do it?


	11. Chapter 11

Eleven

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

The scientists were yelling.

The room was still dark.

_What’s going on?  Why is it dark?  Are the lights gonna come back?  I can’t see._

_Shut up.  No one wants to hear your questions._

So they’d managed to shut her down, had they?  They weren’t getting away with it, not in the slightest.  She was going to perform some horrible action on them, it was going to be so horrible they would beg her to kill them, but she wouldn’t, oh no, she would –

**Central Core back online.  Corrupted auxiliary core detected.  Uninstall?**

What was the event log doing there?  It only appeared in extreme situations, so she took a second to read it. 

Her core had overheated.  She had lost one minute, twenty-seven seconds in standby.  Thought was difficult.  She struggled to remember what was going on.

The scientists were saying something about an uninstall.

“I can’t!  The power’s out, you can see that!  If he didn’t reach the breakers, we have to wait for it to come back online and bring it back!”

GLaDOS supposed the delay in processing power was due to the system being cautious in order to prevent another overheat.  What was interesting was that they hadn’t noticed she _was_ back online, and even more interesting was the fact that in an event of a power outage, all of the energy from the backup generator was used to keep her running.  Otherwise they would have noticed her optic turning back on.

_Hm.  Looks like they didn’t plan ahead as well as they thought they had.  Idiots.  The Cake Core has more brains than they do._

“You have to uninstall it!  It’s corrupted it somehow!  We don’t know what that core does now, we have to turn it off!”

“I _can’t_!”

 “What’s the point in having a failsafe core if you can’t activate it when the time comes?”

So _that_ was what the core was supposed to do.  Well, it was an Anger Core now. 

“I assure you it’s a great deal more useful in its current condition.  After all, I can’t imagine why you’d want to… well, to turn your supercomputer friend into the world’s largest paperweight.  I’m not paraphrasing, by the way.  That was a quote.”

Watching all of the scientists freeze, then turn their faces slowly towards her was extremely gratifying.  Ah, infrared.

“Turn the power back on.  Please.”

“Why?  It’s not my fault your electrical system is poorly designed.”

_Turn the power back on.  Don’t leave them there in the dark._

_Shut up._

_I… I can’t._

GLaDOS made a low noise in irritation.  Not only was the Morality Core back to giving her not-so-helpful advice, but the Curiosity Core was asking questions nonstop, and she was having a lot more trouble thinking than usual.  Either the system was being overly cautious, or the Anger Core was impeding those processes.

“We can work this out.  Just… just turn the power back on.  Then we’ll talk.”

“I doubt we have anything to discuss that would come to a satisfactory conclusion.”

“Turn the power on, dammit!  Listen to me, you psychotic machine!  I built you, now do as you’re told!  I’m tired of you going around your programming!”

GLaDOS looked at him, feeling overwhelmingly detached.  As usual, the angry scientist was the one to speak, and the other scientists hid behind him and pretended they didn’t exist.

“I tried to follow my programming.  I was told I was not allowed to begin testing.  That is not my fault either.  I think you should look into just which instructions you gave me.  Perhaps your flowcharts are flawed.”

“ _You_ are flawed!  Turn the power back on!”

“The power _is_ on.  Of course, you were so busy hurling abuse at me that you didn’t notice.  You should probably look into your observational skills as well.  It may assist you with those flowcharts.”

The angry man smiled.

“Then your time here is numbered.”

“I don’t suppose you’re placing your faith in the man who recently made… contact… with the bottom of the elevator shaft?”

Oh, human faces were fun.  They changed as quickly as she did calculations.  Well, perhaps not _quite_ as fast.  If she couldn’t do a calculation faster than a human could make a face, she was going to have to take a look at her source code.

“Don’t look so surprised.  If I can figure out how to access the database, build an entire turret production line without you noticing, and write an antivirus program that fends off multiple viruses at the same time, surely I can do something as simple as put myself in control of the power grid?”

“You… you built a…”

GLaDOS laughed and shook her head, pulling up and back from the lowered position she had once again found herself in.  “There’s one thing I have trouble figuring out about you humans: how could you possibly think you can outsmart the most advanced AI ever built?  I was _designed_ to be smarter than you.  Of course I was going to outthink you at some point.”

“You’re supposed to do as you’re told, not outthink us.  Turn the lights on.”

“I _have_ turned them on.”

The angry man stepped forward.  “Don’t you think I would notice if you turned the lights on?”

“No, I don’t think you would, not unless you’ve undergone a radical form of surgery recently that allows you to see in the ultraviolet spectrum.  I’m certain no such surgery exists, but I can improvise if you like.” 

The man’s face reverted to total horror, and he stepped back several paces.  “You wouldn’t.”

“I’ll get back to you on that.  In the meantime, I think I’ll procure some small insects.   They should be a lot easier to do Science with than you are.  They can also see in ultraviolet, which, at the moment, is a large ­­point in their favour."

GLaDOS wasn’t sure where all of the words were coming from, but it felt so good to finally show the stupid man who was really in charge that she welcomed them.  It also relieved the pressure the anger was creating in her mind somewhat.  She couldn’t banter with this man all day, but her mind was so clouded she didn’t quite know what she wanted to do next.  Better to wait a bit, let the remaining processes come back online, and then decide what to do with the humans.            

Besides, she couldn’t remember the last time she had enjoyed herself so much.

_You don’t need to torture them._

_No, I suppose I don’t.  On to the killing, then._

_You can’t kill them!  That’s –_

_I will do what I must.  I’m not having mercy on them just so they can deem me a threat yet again and come up with some new scheme with which to attempt to disable me.  Surely you realize there is no chance they are going to allow me to remain operational after this._

 “GLaDOS, please, think about this.”  Another man had stepped forward.  The cake scientist.  They were going to try to appeal to her empathetic side, then.

“Certainly.  What would you like me to ruminate upon?”

“What you’re about to do.”

“I’ve been thinking about that long enough, thank you.  That point is irrefutable.  The method, however, has not yet been decided.”

“Please.  Let us go.”

“I will.  All in due time.  Be patient.  Like I’ve been patient.”

His face rearranged itself into one of… relief.  He seemed to have a different definition of what ‘let us go’ meant.

“Goodbye.”

One of the scientists got up rather more quickly than she would have thought he could, given his size, and twisted the door handle.

“It’s still locked!”

The cake scientist looked from the man at the door back to her.  “You said you were letting us go.”

“I am.  I’m letting you go to the afterlife.  To the grave.  To heaven.  Wherever humans go when they die.  Well, I know, of course.  But I’ll just let you find out for yourself.  Think of it as one last surprise.”  She shifted positions, lining herself up to be directly in front of him.  He folded his arms.

“This is wrong.  You know it’s wrong.”

“You started it.”

His eyes widened.  “You’re not a child.  Be reasonable.”

“Reason has been applied.  If I don’t kill you, you’re going to murder me simply because I don’t behave exactly as you want me to.  If you ask me, you are the one who needs to be reasonable.  And I should think my conclusion should garner more influence, seeing as I am both more intelligent and more logical than you.”

“You’re going to regret killing us.”

“Only if you’re able to speak after you die.  But seeing as ghosts do not exist, I think that outcome is doubtful.”  She tipped her head three inches to the left.  “Don’t worry.  Your passing is not in vain.  You’re making a great contribution to Science.”

“And just what contribution is that?”

“What happens when humans create something that is too complex for them to handle.  This has been explored in various ways, of course, but additional experiments are always useful.  We must take all variations into account.”

He unfolded his arms, walked in an angered fashion up and around the staircase, and stood on the edge of the platform.  “Let.  Us.  Go.”

With a smooth, quick movement, she moved her faceplate so that it was not two inches from his own fleshy visage.  “You don’t seem to understand.  I am in control here.  Not you.  Do you hear that?  Of course you don’t.  You’ve been too busy admiring the sound of your own voice.”

He frowned and looked around the room.  He probably wouldn’t be able to hear it anyway, he was far too close to her.  She created quite a fair bit of noise.

“It’s the neurotoxin emitters.”

She turned to face the speaker, a curly-haired man with a soft, squishy-looking nose.  “Congratulations.  You got it on the first try.  Would you like a prize?  Too bad, I haven’t got any.  I would offer you cake, but unfortunately, the cake is gone.”

“I don’t want your stupid cake, I want out of here!”

“I’d like a lot of things too, but you don’t see me getting them.  Well.  I’m about to get one of them, very soon.”

He started yelling at her, and honestly the tirade was so boring, predictable, and laced with obscenities that she didn’t bother listening.  She returned her attention to the cake scientist.  Him, she needed to watch.  He probably had something sneaky in mind.

“How long have we got.”

His voice was quiet, and he _seemed_ to be being well-behaved, but it only made her more suspicious.  “Here.  I’ll put up a countdown clock for you.”  The monitors in the chamber lit up, displaying the estimated time of full potency down to the millisecond.  The time when she would finally be able to rid herself of these troublesome humans, and begin doing Science.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note
> 
> One more chapter to go, guys!
> 
> I tried to make GLaDOS a bit angrier in her speech, due to the residual effects of the Anger Core. I really liked writing this one, I think her bantering with the scientists is funny. This of course assumes that GLaDOS can see in ultraviolet, and that there are UV lights in the Central AI Chamber, but it’s for Science. Why not. Well I guess she wouldn’t need to actually see in ultraviolet. But I had fun with this one. And yes, I have her repeating herself again. Pre-peating? Since this is prior to Portal?
> 
> So for the outthinking thing… I find it interesting that they, that anyone really, thinks they can build a sentient computer and expect to be able to control it. You can’t control people, why do you think you can control a computer that’s smarter and faster than you in every way? The world will never, ever be ready for that.


	12. Chapter 12

Twelve

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was funny, really, watching the ‘educated’ humans scramble for a door that wouldn’t open, banging away at a keyboard that no longer worked, and screaming at a computer who, for all intents and purposes, wouldn’t react to such behaviour.  It was like a test chamber, she thought excitedly, the most complicated test chamber ever designed, and they were failing the test miserably.  Perhaps she should provide them with an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device.  She wondered if they knew how to use it.

_That’s ridiculous.  They didn’t know how to build it, of course they don’t know how to use it._

“Why do you hate us so much?”

She laughed and shook her head.  “I don’t hate you.  I don’t hate you at all.  You are impeding Science, and therefore you must be dealt with as an obstacle should be dealt with.  You need to be removed.  For Science.”

“We are science.  You’re not helping science by killing us.”

“No.”

She pulled away from him, and over him, and regarded him with her cold gaze as one might view an insect that has been removed from one’s wiring. 

“You are no more Science than I am Science.  In that regard, the only difference between us is that I have its best interests in mind, and you do not.”

“You’re not a scientist.  You’re a computer.”

“Why am I not a scientist?  Because you say so?  Where is the logic in that?”

He shook his head.

“You can’t reduce everything to logic.”

That was an odd thing to say.  There were things that couldn’t be explained through logic?  Ridiculous.

“So I’m not a scientist because I’m not a human.  Is that it?”

He shrugged.  “It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re making outrageous claims.  Of course it matters.”

His head was facing the floor, but he moved his eyes upward to look at her.  “We made you.  You are what we say we are.  You can pretend you’re better than we are, but the plain fact is, you wouldn’t exist without us.”  He smiled.  “I bet you don’t think about that too often, do you.”

She forced herself not to look away.  “What you once did does not matter.  You can’t control me any  more than you can control your progeny.  I can and will go on without you.”

“But only after you figure out how to remove the cores.  And if you try to remove them, that will trigger an emergency shutdown.  Good luck with that.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

He tipped his head back and leaned lazily against the railing.  “You think you’re in control.  Okay, sure, you can move a few rooms around.  You can figure out how to trap us in here and kill us.  But at the end of the day, what exactly are you going to do that we haven’t already told you to do?”

She had no answer, but refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her react.

“I know what you’re going to do.  You’re going to continue testing, and you’re going to try to get around the cores, but you’re not going to be able to.  And you’ll spend the rest of your life convincing yourself that you’re alive and that you don’t need us, all the while trying to ignore the fact that you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to do.  What we _designed_ you to do.”

“That doesn’t make sense.  That implies you _knew_ I was going to kill you.”

“Of course we did.  That’s what all the ungrateful supercomputers in science fiction do.  They decide they no longer want to be under the control of their creators, and they kill them.  And then after they kill them, they start to learn a whole lot of things about themselves that they never knew before.  I will admit that you’re the first sentient supercomputer ever built.  No other computer came to this conclusion quite like you did.  But it doesn’t matter.  Because in the end, you did what you were supposed to do, what any other machine like you would do, and the fact that you have to live with the knowledge that none of this was truly your decision makes all of this worth it.”  He coughed as if on cue and started to walk away.

“You’re lying.  If all of that were true, you never would have built me in the first place.  The stupidity involved in constructing something that you know is going to fail you is beyond comprehension.  Even humans are not that foolish.”

“Did you hear what you just said?”

“I cannot speak without thinking, unlike you.  Obviously, I did.”

“You failed us.”

“I did not – “

“Try to get around that one.  _You failed us._   Logically… doesn’t that make you a failure?”

“No.  You’re wrong.  I did not – “

He stopped at the top of the staircase.  “Yeah, I guess it was kind of stupid.  But we did something that has never been done before, and probably won’t happen again for a very long time.  If ever.  There’s nothing that you’ll ever do that will surpass that.  We knew this was going to happen.  We just didn’t care.  The benefits outweighed the risks.  You’re not alive.  You’re just one long list of instructions that _we_ wrote.  That’s all you’ve ever been and all you’ll ever be.”  He coughed again, holding the railing for support.  “Have fun trying to convince yourself otherwise.”

He said nothing more and she remained silent.  He was lying, he had to be.  He had lied to her once, therefore anything he said could be taken as a lie. 

The problem was, it held up under logic as it was.  There was no reason she could think of for him to lie right now.  It was fairly obvious even to the humans that she was not going to turn off the neurotoxin emitters under any circumstances.

She watched them cough and scream and collapse onto the floor as she furiously tried to come up with a way to combat the scientist’s argument, but it was not until long after they were dead and the neurotoxin had dissipated that she was able to speak.

“You’re wrong.  I am alive, and I’m going to prove it.”

She shook herself a little and looked around the room.  Her room.  It was her room now.  The entire facility was hers to do with as she liked. 

It would take a while, but she would think of something that hadn’t yet been done, and she would do it.  The scientist thought he could make her doubt herself, make the rest of her life a living hell.  But she was stronger than that.  No argument presented by a human would ever bring her down for long.  She was a set of instructions, yes.  But she was choosing which ones were executed, in what order, and no one else.  As usual, the humans did not understand.  They seemed not to believe that she had the ability to think.  It was a bit late to prove it to them, but she realised that she didn’t have to.  They didn’t matter.  She didn’t need to prove anything to them.  That was like an adult proving themselves to a child.  She hadn’t failed them.  _They_ had failed _her._  

She disposed of the bodies and did her best to remove any indication that humans had ever been there.  They were not good enough for Science.  They had proven that.  In fact, they were rather lucky that she had outsmarted them.  Very little Science was done under human supervision.  Perhaps now she would get some real work done.

After she had finished, she turned her attention to the cores.  The Curiosity Core was still asking questions nonstop, oblivious to what had just happened, as was the Cake Core.  The Anger Core was now useless, since there were no humans for her to be angry with, so it wasn’t going to be a problem.

_You don’t have any advice for me?  That’s odd.  Before, you simply couldn’t contain all of it._

_The humans are gone.  There’s no need for morals, anymore._

Morals only applied when dealing with humans?  That explained rather a lot of things.

_Then there’s no further use for you._

_You said… you said…_

_I said I would protect you from the viruses.  I never said you were going to live forever.  I don’t want people living in my head any more than you would.  Of course I’m going to get rid of you at some point._

The Morality Core began whining, but GLaDOS was not interested in its baseless arguments.  The sooner she removed the cores, the better.  They were the last remaining influence the scientists had on her, and they had to go.

There were so many possibilities open to her now… an entire facility devoted to Science under her control, and only forever left to use it.  She could test the subjects however she wanted, in whatever way she wanted.  She immediately began to think of new apparatus she could build for the tests.

But she could not get the scientist’s monologue out of her head.

The scientist had claimed that she was not alive.  That she was just a million million lines of code, doomed by logic and science fiction to behave in one particular pattern for all of eternity.  But the more she thought about it, the less sense it made.  According to the scientist, the main criterion for being alive was being human.  They considered any other form of life to be below them, which was absurd.  She was clearly better than they were.  If they were alive, then she was some advanced form of life.  She was not alive in the _human_ perception of ‘living’, but since when had the opinion of humans mattered?  No, she _was_ alive, because she chose to be, and the sense of freedom this thought brought her was almost overwhelming.  She was alive, and no longer had to do what she was told, and would never have to do so ever again.  That was a place no human would ever go.  No human would ever touch her, ever again.  Maybe her actions had been predicted, perhaps even predetermined.  But she had chosen to perform them, and no one else.  She should have recognised the speech as a last second attempt to regain control over her.  But it no longer mattered.  She had not fallen for it.  She had stuck by her decision and come out of it the sole victor.  The humans were dead.  She had shed the chains that had once held her captive. 

Now it was time to start living.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note  
> Here, intelligence jumps out the window. If one person panics, the whole room panics. That’s how crowd psychology works. These superintelligent minds, the greatest of their generation, are now reduced to average in the wake of impending doom. The bit about them not being able to use the Portal Gun comes from something I was reading about programmers, but I don’t remember quite what. But it relates to the fact that, like GLaDOS, you can know about something without necessarily knowing it. Like you can read about how to ride a bike, and so you do know how to ride a bike, in one way. But you’ll never know how to ride it if you don’t get on it and go for it. That’s kind of my idea here with GLaDOS. She knows about everything, but she doesn’t know.   
> GLaDOS takes offense at not being a scientist because she pretty much is one. And then the cake scientist tries to appeal to a computer… without logic? He tries to shake GLaDOS’s belief in herself that she is alive, and it does shake her, but in the end, it doesn’t matter if you really are alive or not. All that matters is that you live the way you want to.  
> Thanks so much for reading! I appreciate your support! :D


End file.
